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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



HEADQUARTERS 28TH DIVISION 

AMERICAN EXTODITIONARY FORCES 

FRANCE 



27th October 1918. 



MEMORAJronU - RED KETSTOHBS 



A RED KETSTONE has been designated as the distinctive insignia of this 



Keystones are to be worn on all coats and oTercoats^ including the 
trench and short coats worn by officers, and the Maoklnawe issued to Engineers 
motorcycle drivers, etc., but not on the slicker, 

A standard size of Keystone of selected color and qnality of cloth has 
been adopted and contracted for by the Quartermaster's Department. These will 
be issued at the rate of two per man and no others will be worn. They are to 
!» sewed on the left sleeve with red thread, the top to be on the line of the 
seam. 

The proportions of a Keystone are shown below-. 



--f 





By command of Major General Hay: 



W.C. Sweeney, 
Chief of Staff. 



The Official Order Designating the 28th as the 
Keystone Division {Reduced) 



THE IRON DIVISION 

NATIONAL GUARD OF PENNSYLVANIA 

IN THE WORLD WAR 

THE AUTHENTIC AND COMPREHEN- 
SIVE NARRATIVE OF THE GALLANT 
DEEDS AND GLORIOUS ACHIEVE- 
MENTS OF THE 28TH DIVISION IN 
THE WORLD'S GREATEST WAR 



BY 

H. G. PROCTOR 




PHILADELPHIA 

THE JOHN C. WINSTON COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 






Copyright, 1919, by 
The John C. Winston Co. 



Copyright, 1918, by 
The Evening Bulletin 



M 24T9ia 



CI.A5I2151 



To The 

Mothers of Pennsylvania, 

And especially those who mourn for 

Lads who lie in the soil 

OF France, 
This Book is Dedicated 



FOREWORD 

IF LOVE, admiration and respect, with 
a sense of personal gratification at see- 
ing the hopes and predictions of years 
fulfilled, may be pleaded as justification 
for a self-appointed chronicler, then this 
book needs no excuse. It is offered with 
a serene confidence that it does justice, 
and nothing more than simple justice, to 
as fine and gallant a body of soldiers 
as ever represented this great common- 
wealth in action. 

There must be, for the loved ones of 
these modern crusaders, as well as for the 
thousands of former members of the 
National Guard, who, like the writer, 
whole-heartedly envied the opportunities 
for glorious service that came to their 
successors in the organization, a sense 
of deep and abiding pride in the price- 
less record of achievement. To all such, 
and to those others to whom American 
valor is always a readable subject, what- 
ever the locale, the narrative is presented 
as not unworthy of its cause. 

H. G. P. 



CONTENTS 

Paqb 

I. Men of Iron 11 

II. Off For the Front. ... 25 

III, The Last Hun Drive. . . 48 

IV. "Kill or Be Killed" . . 60 
V. The Guard Stands Fast . 77 

VI. Boche in Full Flight . . 91 

VII. Bombed From the Air . . 108 

VIII. In Heroic Mold 121 

IX. The Church of Roncheres 137 

X. At Grips with Death . . 157 

XI. Drive to the Vesle . . . 168 

XII. In Death Valley 184 

XIII. Stars of Grim Drama . . 199 

XIV. Ambulanciers to Front . 213 
XV. A Martial Panorama. . . 227 

XVI. In the Argonne 241 

XVII. Million Dollar Barrage . 251 

XVIII. "An Enviable Reputation " 262 

XIX. Ensanguined Apremont . . 278 

XX. Toward Hunland 291 






ILLUSTRATIOXS 

The Officl^x Order Desigxatixg 
THE 28th as the Keystoxe Dm- 
siON Frontispiece 

PAGE 

Fr.\nce at Last I Iron Drtsiox 
Debarking 2^ 

Into the ]\L\w of Battle .... 186 

Briefly at Rest ix the Argoxxe 
Forest 248 



^^ 



CHAPTER I 

Men of Iron 

YOU are not soldiers! You are men 
of iron!" 
Such was the tribute of an idol- 
ized general to the men of the Twenty- 
eighth Division, United States Army, after 
the division had won its spurs in a glori- 
ous, breath-taking fashion at the second 
battle of the Marne in July and August, 
1918. 

The grizzled oflScer, his shrewd, keen 
eyes softened to genuine admiration for 
the deeds of the gallant men and with real 
sorrow for the fallen, uttered his simple 
praise to a little group of officers at a cer- 
tain headquarters. 

It was too good to keep. It was repeated 
with a glow of pride to junior officers and 
swept through all ranks of the entire 
division in an incredibly short time. The 
gratified and delighted soldiery, already 
feeling the satisfaction of knowing their 
task had been well done, seized upon the 
(11) 



12 THE IRON DIVISION 

words and became, to themselves and all 
who knew them, the **Iron Division." 

The words of praise have been attributed 
to General Pershing. Whether they actu- 
ally emanated from him has not been 
clearly established. That they did come 
from a source high enough to make them 
authoritative there is no shadow of doubt. 

Furthermore, to make the approval 
wholly official and of record, there has 
come to the division from General Persh- 
ing a citation entitling every officer and 
enlisted man to wear on his left sleeve, just 
under the shoulder seam, a scarlet key- 
stone, an unique distinction in the Ameri- 
can Army. The citation called the Twenty- 
eighth a "Famous Red Fighting Division," 
but even this formal designation has not 
supplanted, in the minds of the soldiers, 
the name of "The Iron Division," which 
they regard as their especial pride. 

And, to make the record complete, scores 
of the officers and men throughout the 
division have been cited for gallantry and 
awarded the Distinguished Service Cross 
by General Pershing, while others have 
won the French decoration, the Croix de 
Guerre. 



MEN OF IRON 13 

So it is that the former National Guard 
of Pennsylvania has carried on the fame 
and glory which were the heritage of its 
fathers from the Civil War and from every 
other war in the history of the nation. 
At the cost of many precious young lives 
and infinite suffering, it is true, but that is 
war, whose recompense is that the victory 
was America's and that our men magnifi- 
cently upheld all the traditions of their 
land. 

Regiments and smaller units of the divi- 
sion which did not get into the line in time 
for that first swift battle looked with envy 
upon their comrades who did and pride- 
fully appropriated the division's new-found 
honors, announcing themselves "members 
of the Iron Division." And when their 
own time came, they lived well up to the 
title and reputation. 

Held up to scorn and contempt for 
years as "tin soldiers," made the plaything 
of the pettiest politics, hampered and 
hindered at every emergency and then 
thrown in a sector where it was believed 
they would have a chance to become fire- 
hardened without too great responsibility 
falling to their lot, they met the brunt of 



14 THE IRON DIVISION 

the last German advance from the Marne, 
held it and sent the enemy back, reeling, 
broken and defeated, saved Paris and won 
the grateful and admiring praise of their 
veteran French comrades in arms. 

Throughout all the years of upbuilding 
in full belief that the time would come 
when they would have a chance to vindi- 
cate their faith in the National Guard 
system, a devoted group of officers and 
enlisted men remained faithful and un- 
shaken. The personnel fell and rose, fell 
and rose. Men constantly dropped out of 
the service as their enlistments expired and 
the burden of recruiting and training new 
men was always to be met. It was dis- 
couraging work, but carried forward steadily 
and unfalteringly. 

Persons who visited the National Guard 
of Pennsylvania in its training camps, 
especially the last one in this country. 
Camp Hancock, at Augusta, Ga., were 
impressed with the quiet confidence with 
which the older officers and enlisted men 
viewed their handiwork. Many of the 
newer men in the service, catching the 
spirit of confidence, voiced it in boyish 
boastfulness. 



MEN OF IRON 15 

"These men are ripe and ready," said 
the older, more thoughtful ones. "They 
will give a good account of themselves 
when the time arrives. They are trained 
to the minute, and Pennsylvania never will 
have need to be ashamed of them." 

"Just wait until this little old division 
gets to France," bragged the younger ones. 
"The Hun won't have a chance. We'll 
show 'em something they don't know. Go 
get 'em; that's us." 

And today, Pennsylvania, mourning, 
grief-stricken, but aglow with pride and 
love for that gallant force, agrees with 
both. 

It is an odd coincidence that the Twenty- 
eighth Division of the German army should 
have been one of the most frequently 
mentioned organizations of the Kaiser's 
forces during the war and that it, too, 
should have acquired, by its exploits, a 
title all its own. It was known as "the 
Flying Shock Division," and on frequent 
occasions it was disclosed, through the 
capture of prisoners, that the two Twenty- 
eighth Divisions were opposing each other — 
a fact eloquent in itself of the esteem in 
which the enemy held our Pennsylvania 



16 THE IRON DIVISION 

lads as foemen, for the "Flying Shock 
Division'' was shunted from one end of 
the Western Front to the other, wherever 
a desperate situation for the Germans 
called for desperate fighting. 

In the heroic stand of the Pennsylvania 
Guardsmen may be traced one more in- 
stance of the truth of the adage that 
"history repeats itself." On the field of 
Gettysburg a handsome monument marks 
the crest of Pickett's charge, the farthest 
point to which Confederate fighting men 
penetrated in their efforts to break through 
the Union lines. Here they were met and 
stopped by Pennsylvania troops (the Phila- 
delphia Brigade). Had they not been 
stopped, military authorities have agreed, 
the battle of Gettysburg almost certainly 
would have been lost to the Union. The 
whole course of the war probably would have 
been changed and the Confederacy would 
have been within sight of ultimate victory. 

But they were met and stopped by the 
Pennsylvania troops. From that time the 
cause of the Confederacy was a losing one, 
and for that reason the monument is 
inscribed as marking "The High Water 
Mark of the Rebellion." 



MEN OF IRON 17 

It is not inconceivable that, when the time 
comes to erect monuments on the battle- 
fields of the Great War, one will stand at 
or near the tiny village of St. Agnan, in the 
Department of the Aisne, France, fixing 
the "high-water mark" of the German bid 
for world domination. 

Here it was, at this village and its vicin- 
ity, that Pennsylvania troops met and 
defeated the flower of the German army, 
halted the drive and sent the Huns stag- 
gering backward in what turned, within a 
few days, to wild flight. The Germans, in 
their first rush through Belgium and France 
in 1914, came closer than that to Paris, 
but with less chance of success. Then 
virtually everything was against them ex- 
cept the tremendous impetus of their for- 
ward movement. In July, 1918, everything 
favored them, and the entire world awaited 
with bated breath and agonized heart the 
news that Paris was invested. 

When it seemed that nothing could pre- 
vent this crowning blow to our beloved 
Ally, the advancing Germans struck a 
portion of the line held by Pennsylvania's 
erstwhile despised National Guardsmen. 
Instead of news that Paris lay under the 



18 THE IRON DIVISION 

invader's heel came the gloriously thrilling 
tidings that the German was in retreat 
before our very own men, and that it was 
again Pennsylvania troops which had turned 
the tide. 

To get a proper perspective on the organ- 
izations comprising the Iron Division, it is 
necessary to go back a few years in the 
history of the National Guard, before the 
various reorganizations to which it was 
subjected. The division was a product of 
gradual growth since the Spanish-American 
War. After that brief conflict, the National 
Guard of Pennsylvania set out upon a new 
course of development almost as a new 
organization. 

In 1916, it consisted of four infantry 
brigades of three regiments each; one 
regiment of artillery; one battalion of 
engineers; one battalion of signal troops; 
two field hospitals, three ambulance com- 
panies and one regiment of cavalry. 

The call for service in the threatened 
war with Mexico, resulting in a tedious 
tour of duty at Camp Stewart, Texas, on 
the Mexican border, caused lively recruit- 
ing and the upbuilding of the units. This 
was nearly offset on the return home by 



MEN OF IRON 19 

the eagerness of officers and enlisted men, 
disgusted with the fruitless task assigned 
them on the border, to get out of the serv- 
ice. When America entered the war 
against Germany, however, recruiting again 
livened up, but in the meantime the tables 
of organization of the whole army had 
been so changed and the regiments so 
enlarged that it was necessary to send 
quotas of selected men to fill the ranks to 
the required strength. 

During the service on the Mexican bor- 
der, a brigade of artillery had been formed 
and the number of infantry brigades was 
reduced to three. Also, a start was made 
on the work of expanding the engineer 
battalion into a regiment. 

The division moved into camp at 
Augusta, Ga., from August 20 to Septem- 
ber 15, 1917. The post was known as 
Camp Hancock. Here the drafts of selected 
men were received and the division was 
completely reorganized to conform to the 
new army standards. New designations 
also were awarded the units. It was 
necessary to reduce the number of infantry 
brigades to two, of two regiments each. 
The First Infantry Regiment, of Phila- 



20 THE IRON DIVISION 

delphia; the Tenth, of PhiUppine fame, 
haihng from counties in the southwestern 
part of the state; the Sixteenth, centering 
in the oil country of the northwest, and the 
Eighteenth, of Pittsburgh, were chosen as 
base regiments, to retain their regimental 
organizations virtually intact. 

The Thirteenth Infantry Regiment, of 
Scranton and vicinity, was broken up and 
its officers and men turned into the First 
to bring the companies up to the required 
strength. In the same manner, the Third, 
of Philadelphia, was consolidated with the 
Tenth; the Eighth, from Harrisburg and 
vicinity, with the Sixteenth, and the Sixth, 
from Philadelphia and surrounding counties, 
with the Eighteenth. 

The former First and Thirteenth became 
the 109th Infantry, in the new designa- 
tions; the former Third and Tenth, the 
110th; the former Sixth and Eighteenth, 
the 111th, and the former Eighth and 
Sixteenth, the 112th. 

The former First Artillery, whose batter- 
ies were distributed through the state from 
Pittsburgh to Phoenixville, became the 
107th Field Artillery; the historic old 
Second Infantry, transformed into the Sec- 



MEN OF IRON 21 

ond Artillery during the border duty, 
whose home station is Philadelphia, became 
the 108th Field Artillery. The Third 
Artillery, which had been formed from the 
former Ninth Infantry, of Wilkes-Barre 
and the surrounding anthracite towns, be- 
came the 109th Field Artillery. 

The cavalry regiment disappeared. One 
troop, from Sunbury, remained cavalry, 
being attached to division headquarters as 
Headquarters Troop. The rest were scat- 
tered through different organizations. The 
103d Trench Mortar Battery was formed 
almost entirely from among the cavalry- 
men, largely members of the famous old 
First City Troop of Philadelphia. 

The engineer regiment became the 103d 
Engineers, the signal troops tlie 103d Field 
Signal Battalion, and the field hospitals 
and ambulance companies became parts 
of the 103d Sanitary Train. In addition, 
there were formed the 103d Military 
Police, the 103d Ammunition Train, the 
103d Supply Train, and the 107th, 108th 
and 109th Machine Gun battalions. 

The 109th and 110th Infantry regiments 
were brigaded together under the designa- 
tion of the 55th Infantry Brigade. The 



22 THE IRON DIVISION 

111th and 112th regiments became the 
56th Infantry Brigade and the three 
artillery regiments and the trench mor- 
tar battery became the 53d Artillery 
Brigade. 

There were other Pennsylvanians — ^many 
thousands of them — in the war, but no 
other organization so represented every 
locality and every stratum of society. 

And so the division went to France. 
The movement to a port of embarkation 
began in April, 1917, and the convoy 
carrying the eager soldiers arrived in a 
French port May 18th. The troops were 
separated by organizations, brigaded with 
British troops in training areas and entered 
upon the final phases of their instruction. 
The men were discouraged by their excep- 
tionally long period of preparation. They 
felt within themselves that they were 
ready for the front line, and the evident 
hesitation of the military authorities to 
put them there was distressing. Many of 
them began to doubt that they would see 
actual fighting. They had longed and 
waited for so many months that it is no 
exaggeration, on the word of men who have 
returned, to say that their very dreams 



MEN OF IRON 23 

were colored with the keen desire to try 
their mettle on the enemy. 

According to the system worked out by 
the high command for bringing new troops 
up to front line caliber, they should then 
have gone into their own camp within 
sound of the guns, but behind the actual 
"zone of operations." There the division 
should have been reassembled and gotten 
to functioning properly and smoothly as a 
division, and then have been moved up by 
easy stages. It should have occupied one 
billet area after another, each closer to the 
lines, until it should actually have been 
under artillery fire behind the fighting line. 
Then, with its nerves tautened and having 
learned, possibly through some losses, how 
best to take care of and protect itself, it 
would at last have been sent into the front 
line, but even then not without some mis- 
givings and it would have been carefully 
watched to see that it reacted properly to 
the new conditions. 

In the progress of this customary routine, 
the work of assembling the division was 
begun a few miles northwest of Paris. 
Division headquarters was established at 
Gonesse, a little over ten miles from the 



24 THE IRON DIVISION 

heart of Paris. The infantry regiments 
and the engineers were scattered through a 
myriad of villages in the vicinity, billeted 
in houses, stables, buildings of any kind 
that could be turned to adequate shelters. 

Established thus, the organizations ex- 
tended over a considerable stretch of ter- 
ritory. The 109th, for instance, was at 
Mitry and Mory, twin villages, but a short 
distance apart and usually referred to, for 
convenience, as one place, Mitry-Mory, 
eight miles by airline from division head- 
quarters. 

The 53rd Artillery Brigade still was hard 
at its training work miles away and the 
doughboys, surmising that they would not 
be withheld from action to wait for the 
guns, gave thanks that it was the old 
Second, and not one of their regiments, 
that had been turned into artillery. Men 
of the old Third, particularly, recalled that 
it had been generally expected, when there 
was talk of transforming an infantry regi- 
ment to artillery, that their 's would be the 
regiment to be chosen, and that the naming 
of the Second had come as something of a 
surprise. 



CHAPTER II 

Off for the Front 

THE infantry regiments had been 
assembled during June and a long 
and a wearisome wait impended 
while other units moved into the divisional 
concentration. No leaves were granted 
to go to Paris, although the crown of the 
Eiffel Tower could be descried above the 
haze from the city by day and at night 
the searchlights, thrusting inquisitive fin- 
gers of light through the far reaches of the 
sky in search of prowling Hun airmen^ 
seemed to point the way to joys to which 
all had long been strangers. 

From the other direction came, when the 
wind was right, the dull rumbling, like 
distant thunder, which they had learned 
was the guns. 

Longings were about evenly divided 
between the two directions. If they could 
not go up to the front, whither they had 
been headed for these many months, they 
would have liked to go to Paris. Failing 

(25) 



26 THE IRON DIVISION 

of both the front and Paris, they would 
have liked to go **any old place away 
from here." Which is typical of the soldier, 
"here," wherever it may be, always being 
the least desirable place in the world. 

So the doughboys and engineers whiled 
away the long, warm days, drilling and 
hiking, doing much bayonet work, polishing 
and cleaning rifles and other equipment 
and variously putting in the time as best 
they could, and fretting all the time for a 
chance at real action. That may be said 
to have been one of the most trying periods 
of their long probation. 

It ma}^ not be amiss to recall the general 
situation on the Western Front at this 
time. After a winter of boastful prepara- 
tion, during which they advertised in 
every possible way that they expected to 
launch in the spring the greatest effort 
they had yet put forth to break through the 
Allied lines, the Germans, on March 21st, 
strengthened by hundreds of thousands of 
veteran soldiers released from Russia 
through the farcical Brest-Litovsk treaty, 
boiled forth from their lines on the fifty - 
mile front from Arras to La Fere. 

This was an effort to force a break at 



OFF FOR THE FRONT 27 

the juncture of the French and British 
lines about St. Quentin. It did not suc- 
ceed in this, but a great wedge was thrust 
out to become a grave menace to Amiens, 
an important British distribution center. 

\er\^ shortly after this move was checked, 
the British army in Flanders was hea\ily 
attacked, on April 9th, in the region of 
Ypres, and thrown back so badly that Field 
Marshal Haig issued his famous appeal to the 
troops *'fighting with their backs to the wall." 

The British line finally held, and, French 
reinforcements arriving, began to react 
strongly in counter-attacks. Again the 
boiling western line simmered doT^n, but 
on May 27tli the German Cro^-n Prince's 
army fiung itseK out from the Chemin des 
Dames, in Champagne, and by June 3d had 
reached the Marne at Chateau-Thierr^'. 
Here forces which made their way across 
the river were hotly attacked and driven 
back, and this drive came to a halt. 

One week later, on June 10th, the fight- 
ing was renewed from Montdidier to Xoyon 
in a thrust for Compiegne as a key to Paris. 
This was plainly an effort to widen the wedge 
whose apex was at Chateau-Thierrv', but 
Foch had outguessed the Germans, knew 



28 THE IRON DIVISION 

where they would strike and held them. 
The attack was fairly well checked in two 
days. 

This was the situation, then, in those 
late June days, when our Pennsylvania 
soldiers pined for action within sight of 
Paris. The American army had been 
blooded in the various drives, but the 
Twenty-eighth Division had not yet had a 
taste of the Hun action. Marines, the 
First and Second divisions of the Regular 
army, engineers and medical troops, had had 
a gallant part in the defense of Paris, and 
even in defense of the channel ports, in the 
Flanders thrust. 

Dormans, Torcy, Bouresches, Bois de 
Belleau, Cantigny, Jaulgonne, these and 
other localities had won place in the annals 
of American arms. Wherever they had 
come in contact with the enemy, without 
exception, the American troops had "made 
good," and won the high encomiums of 
their British and French comrades. Is it 
any wonder, then, that the Pennsylvanians 
chafed at the restraint which held them 
far away from where such great things 
were going forward.^ 

It was at the critical juncture in March, 



OFF FOR THE FRONT 29 

the darkest hour of the AlHed cause, that 
President Wilson, waiving any question of 
national pride, directed General Pershing 
to offer such troops as he had available to 
be brigaded with the French and English 
to meet the German assaults. 

The reason for this was simple. The 
American army had not yet been welded 
into a cohesive whole. Its staff work was 
deficient. It was merely a conglomeration 
of divisions, each possibly capable of oper- 
ating as a division, but the whole utterly 
unable to operate as a whole. By putting 
a brigade of Americans in a French or 
British division, however, the forces of our 
co-belligerents could be strengthened to the 
full extent of the available American troops. 

The American offer was promptly and 
gratefully accepted. Came the day, then, 
when our Pennsylvania men were ordered 
to move up to a sector below the Marne, 
there to be brigaded with a French army. 
The artillery brigade had not yet come 
into the divisional lines and few, even of 
the officers, had seen their comrades of the 
big guns since leaving Camp Hancock. 

Of all this, of course, the men in the 
ranks knew nothing. To them came only 



30 THE IRON DIVISION 

the command to "fall in," which had 
always presaged the same weary routine 
of drill and hike. This time, however, 
when they found lines of motor trucks 
stretching along the road seemingly for 
miles, they knew there was "something 
doing" and word swept through the ranks 
that they were off for the front at last. 

When the truck trains got under way 
with their singing, laughing, highly cheer- 
ful loads of doughboys and engineers, it 
was not directly northward, toward Mont- 
didier, nor northeast, toward Soissons, 
where the latest heavy fighting had been 
going on, that they moved, as the men had 
hoped, but eastward. 

Through Meaux and La Ferte-sous- 
Jouarre they moved. At the latter place 
they came to the Petit Morin River and 
from there on the road followed the valley 
of the little river more or less closely. 
Through pretty little villages and, here and 
there, more pretentious towns they whirled, 
singing as the spirit moved them and wav- 
ing cheery greetings to the townsfolk, who, 
apathetic at the sound of many motors, 
stirred to excitement when they realized the 
soldiers were "les Americaines.'* 



OFF FOR THE FRONT 31 

After their period of inaction, the men 
enjoyed the ride immensely, even though 
a crowded motor truck careering at full 
tilt is not the most luxurious mode of 
travel, especially for those on the inside. 
It is, however, so much better than hiking 
that your soldier regards transportation 
thus almost as he would riding in a Pull- 
man at home. 

When at last the column came to a halt, 
those in the vanguard learned the town at 
hand was Montmirail. Except that it was 
east of where they had been, this meant 
little. They had small idea of the number 
of miles they had traveled, but they knew 
from the looks of the country and from the 
attitude of the eagerly welcoming residents 
that they were not very close to the battle 
line. 

Clustered all about the countryside for 
miles were countless villages. Part of the 
troops passed through Montmirail and 
went further east to Vauchamps. The 
trucks in the rear of the long column 
turned off at Verdelot. In the tiny ham- 
lets centering about these three towns, the 
regiments were billeted. 

Then ensued another period such as tries 



32 THE IRON DIVISION 

a soldier's patience to the uttermost — a time 
of waiting for something big to do and hav- 
ing all the time to carry on with what 
seem like trifling tasks. 

Here another feature of the advanced 
training was noted by the men. For 
weeks, now, they had been hearing the 
sound of the big guns at the front, but only 
as a low, growling rumble, so distant that, 
although it was ever present, after a day 
or so it became so much a part of the 
daily life that it was forced upon the atten- 
tion only when the w^ind was from the 
northeast. 

Here, however, it was louder and more 
menacing and by that token alone the 
men would have known they were closer 
to the front lines. Their surmises in this 
regard were strengthened by the added 
gravity of the officers and the frequency 
with which they were summoned to head- 
quarters for consultation. 

The Pennsylvania regiments were in a 
line some miles back of the front, which 
was held by French troops along the Marne. 
The distance between our men and the front 
lines then varied from ten to fourteen miles. 

By the time the men had been in these 



OFF FOR THE FRONT 33 

billets three days, they were disgusted 
thoroughly with their failure to get farther. 
Hourly they grumbled among themselves 
at the delay, and told themselves it was 
"N. G. P. luck," to be held back so far 
at such a time. 

However, there came a break in the 
monotony for the 109th. The men of the 
various regiments had been arranging for 
a mild sort of celebration of the Fourth of 
July, with extra "eats," concerts, sports 
and other events. The 109th had gone to 
sleep the night of Wednesday, July 3d, to 
dream of the *' doings" of the morrow, 
which loomed large in view of the deadly 
routine they had been following so long. 

They were not to sleep long, however. 
Shortly after midnight they were routed 
out and the companies were formed. 
"Something was up," though the men in 
the ranks knew not what. Officers knew 
that an emergency had arisen to the north 
and that they were under orders to hasten 
there with all speed, presumably for their 
first action. 

The lads stumbled from their billets, 
many of them no more than half awake, 
doubting, confused, excited, demanding to 



34 THE IRON DIVISION 

know, being told wild rumors by their 
fellows, the most credible of which was 
that the Germans had broken through in 
the north and that "the old Hundred and 
Ninth is goin' in to stop Fritz, an' we sure 
will do that li'l thing." Small wonder 
that there was more than a usual touch of 
asperity in the commands snapped out in 
the dark, or that the doughboys seemed 
able to handle themselves and their accou- 
trements less smoothly and smartly than 
usual. Off to the front at last, in the dead 
of night! What an experience for these 
Pennsylvania men! 

That the emergency was real and that 
they were not merely the victims of another 
practice hike, soon became clear. Hardly 
was the column under way than the order 
"double-time" was given and off they went 
at the smart dog trot that takes the place 
of running for an army on the march. Only 
when men began to lag behind was the 
return to regular "quick-time" ordered. 
Officers and non-coms busied themselves 
with urging on would-be stragglers, keeping 
the ranks closed up and encouraging the men. 

Hours passed thus. The thrumming of a 
motor was heard ahead and the column 



OFF FOR THE FRONT 35 

halted. A sidecar motorcycle appeared. 
Riding in the '*tin bathtub" was a staff 
officer. He talked aside briefly with Col- 
onel Millard D. Brown, of Philadelphia. 
His message was that the regiment would 
not be needed at that time and that it was 
to return to billets. 

A short rest was ordered. The men 
dropped almost where they stood, many 
not waiting to unsling their equipment. 
Not until daybreak was the order given 
for the return march. The men thought 
of the weary miles they had come in the 
cool of the night, glanced up at the scorch- 
ing sun, remembered that lost Fourth cele- 
bration, and set off on the return march, 
slower and more wearisome than the north- 
ward journey, when every yard seemed a 
task to face. 

It was not until the day was almost 
gone that the last company was safely 
back in billets. The Glorious Fourth — 
truly the strangest the men ever had spent 
— ^had come and gone. As they dropped 
into exhausted sleep that night, the last 
thought of many was of the familiar cele- 
brations of the day at home and of what 
their loved ones had been doing. 



36 THE IRON DIVISION 

When word had filtered through to the 
other regiments that the 109th was on its 
way to the front, the celebration of the 
Fourth had turned to ashes in their mouths 
and they very frankly were green with envy. 
When they heard the next day of the out- 
come of the move, they chuckled at the 
discomfiture of the 109th and regretted they 
had not put more "pep" into the events of 
the day before. 

Some days before this, several platoons 
of picked men from the division had been 
sent into a sector west of Chateau-Thierry 
for advanced training under fire with French 
forces. They were not expected to have a 
very hot time. The sector was extremely 
lively, but not just then flaming with 
activity, as were other places. 

Two of these platoons, from the 111th 
Infantry, under command of Lieutenants 
Cedric H. Benz and John H. Shenkel, both 
of Pittsburgh, made an extraordinarily 
good impression on their French comrades. 
The sector continually grew hotter and 
hotter until the French, early in July, 
launched repeated attacks on the village of 
Vaux and on Hill 204, close by. 

These two positions were particularly 



OFF FOR THE FRONT 37 

difficult, and the French went about their 
operations under the watchful eyes of the 
learning Americans with all the skill and 
craft that long campaigning had taught 
them. Finally, just about the time their 
own regiments back in billets to the east 
were growing stale from monotony, the 
Americans around Vaux were invited to 
occupy positions where they could observe 
closely the whole operation. The platoons 
from the 111th had made such a favorable 
impression on their French hosts that the 
commander of the latter made a proposal to 
them. 

"You will have every opportunity to 
observe the action," he said, "and that is all 
that is expected of you. If, however, you 
so desire, such of your numbers as care to 
may participate in the assault on Hill 204." 

Participation in the attack was voluntary. 
Those who wanted to go were invited to 
step out of the ranks. The two platoons 
stepped forward as one man, went into the 
battle beside the French and under French 
command, laughing and singing, and cov- 
ered themselves with glory. This was the 
first occasion in which units of the Penn- 
sylvania Division had been in action, but 



38 THE IRON DIVISION 

as it was not under their own commanders 
it cannot properly be regarded as a part of 
the divisional activity. 

Word of this action seeped back to the 
regiments and created a profound impres- 
sion. The doughboys talked about and 
envied their companions and pledged them- 
selves, each in his own heart, to maintain 
that high standard of soldierly character 
when the moment arrived. 

Meantime, the regiments had gone plug- 
ging ahead with their training work — trifle 
shooting, bayonet work, hikes and practice 
attacks succeeding each other in bewilder- 
ing variety. 

The work was interrupted July 5th by the 
arrival of messengers from brigade head- 
quarters. The regiments were to move up 
in closer support of the French lines. 
Marshal Foch had shepherded the Ger- 
mans into a position where their only 
possibility for further attack lay almost 
straight south from the tip of the Soissons- 
Rheims salient. The French forces there 
were expected to make the crossing of the 
Marne so hazardous and costly an enter- 
prise that the Germans either would give 
it up almost at the outset, or would be so 



OFF FOR THE FRONT 39 

harassed that the push could gain httle 
headway. In any event, the American sup- 
port troops — ^including our own Pennsyl- 
vanians — ^were depended on to reinforce 
the Hne at any critical moment. And for 
that reason it was imperative that they 
be within easier striking distance. 

So, very early on the morning of July 
6th, the bugles roused the men from their 
slumbers and word was passed by the ser- 
geants to hurry the usual morning duties, 
as there was "something doing." No 
larger hint was needed. Dressing, washing, 
"police duty" and breakfast never were 
dispensed with more rapidly, and in less 
than an hour after first call the regiments 
were ready to move. 

The 110th, the 111th and the engineers 
moved off without incident, other than the 
keen interest aroused by the increasing 
clamor of the guns as they marched north- 
ward, to the new positions assigned them. 
Parts of their routes lay over some of the 
famous roads of France that had not 
suffered yet from the barbarous invaders, 
and made fairly easy going. At times they 
had to strike across country to gain a new 
and more available road. 



40 THE IRON DIVISION 

A doughboy, pressing close to where a 
fine old tree leaned protectingly across the 
sun-baked road, reached up and pulled a 
leafy twig. He thrust it into the air hole 
in his hat, and laughingly remarked that 
''now he was camouflaged." His comrades 
paid no attention until he remarked later 
that it was a good thing to have, as it 
helped keep the flies away. Thereafter 
there were many grasping hands when 
trees or bushes were within reach, and before 
noon the men bore some semblance to the 
Italian Bersaglieri, who wear plumed hats. 

The going was not so smooth for the 
109th, however. The farther the regiment 
moved along its northward road the louder 
and more emphatic became the cannonad- 
ing. Both the oflScers and men realized 
they were getting very much closer to 
artillery fire than they had been. A 
spirit of tense, nervous eagerness pervaded 
the ranks. The goal of the long months 
of hard training, the achievement of all 
their dreams and desires, seemed just ahead. 

They had passed the little village of 
Artonges, where the tiny Dhuys River, no 
more than a bush and tree-bordered run, 
swung over and joined their road to keep 



OFF FOR THE FRONT 41 

it company on the northward route. 
Pargny-la-Dhuys was almost in sight, when 
a shell — their first sight of one in action — 
exploded in a field a few hundred yards to 
one side. 

At almost the same time an officer came 
dashing down the road. He brought orders 
from brigade headquarters for the regiment 
to turn off the road and take cover in a 
woods. Pargny and the whole countryside 
about were being shelled vigorously by 
the Germans with a searching fire in an 
effort to locate French batteries. 

The shelling continued with little cessa- 
tion, while the 109th in vexation hid in the 
woods south of Pargny. The doughboys 
became convinced firmly that the Germans 
knew they were on the way to the front 
and deliberately were trying to prevent 
them, through sheer fear of their well- 
known prowess. For many a Pennsylvania 
soldier had been telling his comrades and 
everybody else for so long that "there 
won't be anything to it when this division 
gets into action," that he had the idea 
fixed in his mind that the Germans must 
be convinced of the same thing. 

Three times the cannonade slackened and 



42 THE IRON DIVISION 

the heckled Pargny was left out of the zone 
of fire. Each time the 109th sallied forth 
from its green shelter and started ahead. 
Each time, just as it got well away and its 
spirits had begun to "perk up" again, the 
big guns began to roar at the town and they 
turned back. 

This continued until July 10th. When 
orders came that morning for the regiment 
to proceed northward, there was much 
gibing at Fritz and his spite against the 
regiment and little hope that the procedure 
would be anything more than another 
march up the road and back again. 

Surprise was in store, however. This 
time the guns were pointed in other direc- 
tions, and the regiment went over the hill, 
through what was left of Pargny after its 
several days of German "hate," and on up 
the road. 

Just when spirits were soaring again 
at the prospect of marching right up to the 
fighting front, came another disappoint- 
ment for the men. A short distance north 
of Pargny, the column turned into a field 
on the right of the road and made its way 
into a deep ravine bordering the northern 
side of the field. Ensued another period of 



OFF FOR THE FRONT 43 

grumbling and fault-finding among the 
men, who could not understand why they 
still saw nothing of the war at first hand. 

The discussion was at its height as the 
men made camp, when it was interrupted 
by a screeching roar overhead, followed 
almost instantaneously by a terrific crash 
in the field above their heads and to the 
south. 

"Whang" came another shell of smaller 
caliber on the other side of the road, and 
then the frightful orchestra was again in 
full swing. Suddenly that little ravine 
seemed a rather desirable place to be, after 
all. Most of the men would have pre- 
ferred to be in position to do some retalia- 
tory work, rather than sit still and have 
those shells shrieking through the air in 
search of them, but the shelter of the hol- 
low was much more to be desired than 
marching up the open road in the teeth of 
shell fire. 

An air of pride sat on many of the men. 
"Old Fritz must know the 109th is some- 
where around," they reasoned. 

Three days passed thus, with the regi- 
ment "holed up" against the almost con- 
tinuous bombardment. Little lulls would 



44 THE IRON DIVISION 

come in the fire and the men would snatch 
some sleep, only to be roused by a renewal 
of the racket, for they had not yet reached 
that stage of old hands at the front, where 
they sleep undisturbed through the most 
vigorous shelling, only to be roused by the 
unaccustomed silence when the big guns 
quit baying. 

Runners maintaining liaison with brigade 
headquarters and the other regiments were 
both better off and worse off, according to 
the point of view. Theirs was an exceed- 
ingly hazardous duty, with none of the 
relatively safe shelter of the regiment, but, 
too, it had that highly desirable spice of 
real danger and adventure that had been a 
potent influence in luring these men to 
France. 

Liaison, in a military sense, is the main- 
taining of communications. It is essential 
at all times that organizations operating 
together should be in close touch. To do 
this men frequently do the seemingly 
impossible. Few duties in the ranks of an 
army are more alluring to adventurous 
youth, more fraught with risk, or require 
more personal courage, skill and resource- 
fulness. 



OFF FOR THE FRONT 45 

At last, however, the tedious wait came 
to an end. Saturday night, July 13th, the 
usual hour for "taps," passed and the 
customary orders for the night had not 
been given. Toward midnight, when the 
men were at a fever heat of expectancy, 
having sensed "something doing" in the 
very air, the regiment was formed in light 
marching order. This meant no heavy 
packs, no extra clothes, nothing but fight- 
ing equipment and two days' rations. It 
certainly meant action. 

Straight northward through the night 
they marched. Up toward the Marne the 
sky was aglow with star shells, flares and 
shrapnel and high explosives. The next 
day, July 14th, would be Bastille Day, 
France's equivalent of our Independence 
Day, and the men of the 109th commented 
among themselves as they hiked toward the 
flaring uproar that it looked as if it ^ould be 
"some celebration." 

The head of the column reached a town, 
and a glimpse at a map showed that it was 
Conde-en-Brie, where the little Surmelin 
River joins the Dhuys. Colonel Brown 
and the headquarters company swung out of 
the column to establish regimental post 



46 THE IRON DIVISION 

command there. The rest of the regiment 
went on northward. 

A mile farther and a halt was called. 
There was a brief conference of battalion 
commanders in the gloom and then the 
first battalion swung off to the left, the 
third to the right and the second extended 
its lines over the territory immediately 
before it. 

When all had arrived in position, the 
first battalion was on a line just south of 
the tiny hamlet of Monthurel, northwest 
of Conde. The second battalion was 
strung out north of Conde, and the third 
continued the line north of the hamlet of 
St. Agnan, northeast of Conde. 

Then the regiment was called on to do — 
for the first time with any thought that it 
would be of real present value to them — 
that which they had learned to do, labor- 
iously, grumblingly and with many a sore 
muscle and aching back, in camp after 
camp. They "dug in." 

There was no sleep that night, even had 
the excited fancies of the men permitted. 
Up and down, up and down, went the 
sturdy young arms, and the dirt flew under 
the attack of intrenching picks and shovels. 



OFF FOR THE FRONT 47 

By daylight a long line of pits, with the 
earth taken out and heaped up on the side 
toward the enemy, scarred the fields. They 
were not pretentious, as trenches went in the 
war — scarcely to be dignified with the 
name of trenches — but the 109th heaved a 
sigh of relief and was glad of even that 
shelter as the Hun artillery renewed its 
strafing of the countryside. 

Runners from the 109th carried the news 
to brigade headquarters that the regiment 
was at last on the line. Thence the word 
seeped down through the ranks, and the 
men of the 110th and 111th and of the 
engineers got little inklings of the troubles 
their comrades of the old First and Thir- 
teenth had experienced in reaching their 
position. 

Roughly, then, the line of the four regi- 
ments extended from near Chezy, on the 
east, to the region of Vaux, beyond Chateau- 
Thierry, on the west. The 103d Engineers 
held the eastern end. Then came, in the 
order named, the 109th, 110th and 111th. 
The 112th was busy elsewhere, and had not 
joined the other regiment of its brigade, 
the 111th. 



CHAPTER III 
The Last Hun Drive 

OUR Pennsylvania regiments now 
were operating directly with French 
troops, under French higher com- 
mand, and in the line they were widely 
separated, with French regiments between. 
The troops faced much open country, 
consisting chiefly of the well-tilled fields 
for which France is noted, with here and 
there a clump of trees or bushes, tiny 
streams, fences and an occasional farm 
building. Beyond these lay a dense woods, 
extending to the Marne, known variously 
in the different localities by the name of 
the nearest town. The Bois de Conde, 
near Monthurel, was the scene of some of 
the stiffest fighting that followed. 

The real battle line lay right along the 
Valley of the Marne, a little more than 
two miles away, and the men of the Penn- 
sylvania regiments were disappointed again 
to learn they were not actually holding the 
front line. That was entirely in the hands 

(48) 



THE LAST HUN DRIVE 49 

of the French in that sector, and French 
oflScers who came back to visit the American 
headquarters and to estabhsh liaison with 
these support troops confidently predicted 
that the Boche never would get a foothold 
on the south bank of the river. The river, 
they said, was so lined with machine gun 
nests and barbed wire entanglements that 
nothing could pass. 

That evening, Sunday, July 14th, runners 
brought messages from brigade headquar- 
ters to Colonel Brown, commanding the 
109th, and Colonel George E. Kemp, of 
Philadelphia, commanding the 110th. There 
were little holes in the French line that it 
was necessary to plug, and the American 
support was called on to do the plugging. 

Colonel Brown ordered Captain James 
B. Cousart, of Philadelphia, acting com- 
mander of the third battalion, to send two 
companies forward to the line, and Colonel 
Kemp, from his post command, despatched 
a similar message to Major Joseph H. 
Thompson, Beaver Falls, commanding his 
first battalion. 

Captain Cousart led the expedition from 
the 109tli himself, taking his own company, 
L, and Company M, commanded by Cap- 



50 THE IRON DIVISION 

tain Edward P. Mackey, of Williamsport. 
Major Thompson sent Companies B, of 
New Brighton, and C, of Somerset, from the 
110th, commanded respectively by Cap- 
tains William Fish and William C. Truxal. 

Captain Cousart's little force was estab- 
lished in the line. Company M below Passy- 
sur-Marne, and Company L back of Courte- 
mont-Varennes. The two companies of the 
110th were back of Fossoy and Mezy, di- 
rectly in the great bend of the river. The 
Dhuys River enters the Marne near that 
point and this river separated the positions 
of the 109th and 110th companies. Fossoy, 
the farthest west of these towns, is only 
four miles in an air line from Chateau- 
Thierry, and Passy is about four miles 
farther east. 

The reason for this move was two-fold: 
Marshal Foch had manipulated his forces 
so that it was felt to be virtually certain 
the next outbreak of the Germans could be 
made only at one point, directly southwest 
from Chateau-Thierry. If the expected 
happened, the green Pennsylvania troops 
would receive their baptism of fire within 
the zone of the operation, but not in the 
direct line of the thrust. Thus, they 



THE LAST HUN DRIVE 51 

would become seasoned to fire without 
bearing the responsibiHty of actually stop- 
ping a determined effort. 

The second reason was that the French 
had been making heavy concentrations 
around Chateau-Thierry, and their line to 
the east was too thin for comfort. There- 
fore, their units were drawn in somewhat 
at the flanks, to deepen the defense line, 
and the Pennsylvania companies were used 
to fill the gaps thus created. 

French staff officers accompanied the 
four companies to the line and disposed 
them in the pockets left for them, in such a 
way that there were alternately along that 
part of the front a French regiment and 
then an American company. The dis- 
position of the troops was completed well 
before midnight. The companies left be- 
hind had watched their fellows depart on 
this night adventure with longing, envious 
eyes, and little groups sat up late discussing 
the luck that fell to some soldiers and was 
withheld from others. 

The men had had no sleep at all the night 
before and little during the day, but no one 
in those four companies, facing the Ger- 
mans at last after so many weary months of 



52 THE IRON DIVISION 

preparation, thought of sleep, even had the 
artillery fire sweeping in waves along the 
front or the exigencies of their position 
permitted it. 

Eagerly the men tried to pierce the 
black cloak of night for a first glimpse of 
the Hun lines. Now and then, as a star 
shell hung its flare in the sky, they caught 
glimpses of the river, and sometimes the 
flash of a gun from the farther shore gave 
assurance that the Boche, too, was awake 
and watching. 

About 11.30 o'clock, the night was shat- 
tered by a ripping roar from miles of French 
batteries in the rear, and the men lay in 
their trenches while the shells screamed 
overhead. It was by far the closest the 
Pennsylvania men had been to intensive 
artillery fire, and they thought it terrible, 
having yet to learn what artillery really 
could be. 

Days afterward, they learned that pris- 
oners had disclosed the intention of the 
Germans to attack that night and that the 
French fire was designed to break up enemy 
formations and harass and disconcert their 
artillery concentration. 

The Germans, with typical Teutonic 



THE LAST HUN DRIVE 53 

adherence to system, paid little attention 
to the French fire until the hour fixed for 
their bombardment. Midnight came and 
went, with the French cannon still bellow- 
ing. Wearied men on watch were relieved 
by comrades and dropped down to rest. 

At 12.30 o'clock, the German line belched 
forth the preliminary salvo of what the 
French afterward described as the most ter- 
rific bombardment of the war up to that time. 
The last German offensive had opened. 

The gates to glory and to death swung 
wide for many a Pennsylvania lad that 
night. 

That the French did not exaggerate in 
their characterization of the bombardment 
was shown in documents taken later on 
captured prisoners. Among these was a 
general order to the German troops assuring 
them of victory, telling them that this was 
the great *'friedensturm," or peace offensive, 
which was to force the Allies to make 
peace, and that, when the time came to 
advance, they would find themselves unop- 
posed. The reason for this, said the order, 
was that the attack was to be preceded by 
an artillery preparation that would destroy 
completely all troops for twenty miles in 



54 THE IRON DIVISION 

front of the German lines. As a matter of 
fact, shells fell twenty-five miles back of 
the Allied lines. 

For mile on mile along that bristling 
line, the big guns gave tongue, not in gusts 
or intermittently, as had been the case for 
days^ but continuously. Only later did 
the men in the trenches learn that the 
attack covered a front of about sixty-five 
miles, the most pretentious the Huns had 
launched. Karl Rosner, the Kaiser's fav- 
orite war correspondent, WTote to the 
Berlin Lokal Anzeiger: 

"The Emperor listened to the terrible 
orchestra of our surprise fire attack and 
looked on the unparalleled picture of the 
projectiles raging toward the enemy's posi- 
tions." 

Pennsylvania's doughboys and engineers 
shared with the then Prussian War Lord 
the privilege of listening to the "surprise 
fire attack," but to them it was like no 
orchestra mortal ear had ever heard. Most 
of those who wrote home afterward used a 
much shorter word of only four letters to 
describe the event. There was, indeed, a 
strange unanimity about the expression: 
"It seemed as if all — had broken loose!" 



THE LAST HUN DRIVE 55 

Crouching in their trenches, powerless 
to do anything for themselves or each 
other, they endured as best they could 
that tremendous ordeal. The very air 
seemed shattered to bits. No longer was 
it "the rumbling thunder of the guns," 
to which they had been giving ear for 
weeks. Crashing, ear-splitting explosions 
came so fast they were blended into one 
vast dissonance that set the nerves to 
jangling and in more than one instance 
upset completely the mental poise of our 
soldiers, so that they had to be restrained 
forcibly by their comrades from rushing out 
into the open in their temporary madness. 

Paris, fifty miles away ''as the crow 
flies." was awakened from its slumber 
after its holiday celebration by the sound 
of that Titanic cannonade and saw the 
flashes, and pictures were jarred from 
the walls by the trembling of the earth. 

The regiments back in the support line 
were little, if any, better ofif than the four 
companies of Pennsylvanians up in the 
front line, for the Hun shells raked the 
back areas as well as tearing through the 
front lines. Men clenched their hands to 
steady shaking nerves against the sheer 



56 THE IRON DIVISION 

physical pressure of that awful noise, but 
officers, both French and their own, mak- 
ing their way along the lines in imminent 
peril to encourage the men, found them 
grimly and amazingly determined and 
courageous. 

As usual with the Boche, he had a sched- 
ule for everything, but it went wrong at 
the very start this time. The schedule, as 
revealed later in captured papers, called 
for the swinging of prepared pontoon bridges 
across the Marne at 1.30 o'clock, after one 
solid hour of artillery preparation, and the 
advance guards were to be in Montmirail, 
thirteen miles to the south, at 8.30 o'clock 
that morning. 

As showing the dependence placed by 
the Germans on their own ability to follow 
such a schedule, it may be permissible here 
to recall that during the fighting an auto- 
mobile bearing the black and white cross 
of the Germans was driven into a village 
held by Americans. It was immediately 
surrounded and a German major, leaning 
out cried, irascibly : 

"You are not Germans!" 

"That's very true," replied an American 
lieutenant. 



THE LAST HUN DRIVE 57 

"But our schedule called for our troops 
to be here at this time," continued the 
perplexed German. 

"They missed connections; that's all. 
Get out and walk back. You are a pris- 
oner," snapped the American. 

The anticipatory artillery fire of the 
French had so harassed the Germans in 
their final preparations that it was not 
until two hours after their schedule time, 
or 3.30 o'clock in the morning, that the 
pontoons were swung across the river and 
the infantry advance began. 

The Prussian Guards led. The bridges 
swarmed with them. The French and 
Americans loaded and fired, loaded and 
fired until rifle barrels grew hot and arms 
tired. Gaps were torn in the oncoming 
hordes, only to be filled instantly as the 
Germans pushed forward from the rear. 
The execution done among the enemy 
when they were concentrated in solid 
masses on the bridges was terrific, and for 
days afterward the stream, about 100 feet 
wide in that section, was almost choked 
with the bodies of Germans. 

The moment the enemy appeared, the 
excitement and nerve-strain of our Penn- 



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CHAPTER IV 
"Kill or Be Killed" 

NOTHING human could halt those 
gray-green waves in the first im- 
petus of the German assault across 
the Marne. They gained the bridgeheads, 
and were enabled to seek cover and spread 
out along the river banks. The grim gray 
line, like an enormous, unclean caterpillar, 
crept steadily across the stream. When 
enough men had gained the southern bank, 
the assault was carried to the Franco- 
American lines. 

Machine guns in countless numbers spat 
venomously from both sides. Rifle-fire 
and rifle-grenade and hand-grenade explo- 
sions rolled together in one tremendous 
cacophony. The appalling diapason of the 
big guns thundered unceasingly. 

Up the wooded slope swept the Hun 
waves. The furious fire of the defenders, 
whatever it meant to individuals, made no 
appreciable impress on the masses. They 
swept to and over the first line. 

(60) 



"KILL OR BE KILLED" 61 

Then, indeed, did the Pennsylvanians 
rise to heroic heights. Gone was most of 
the science and skill of warfare so pains- 
takingly inculcated in the men through 
months of training. Truly, it was "kill 
or be killed." Hand-to-hand, often breast- 
to-breast, the contending forces struggled. 
Men were locked in deadly embrace, from 
which the only escape was death for one or 
both. 

One lad, his rifle knocked from his hands, 
plunged at an antagonist with blazing eyes 
and clenched fists in the manner of fighting 
most familiar to American boys. They 
were in a little eddy of the terrible melee. 
The American landed a terrific "punch" 
on the point of his opponent's chin, just 
as a bullet from the rear struck home in his 
back. The rifle, falling from the hands of 
the German, struck the outflung arms of 
the Pennsylvanian. He seized it, even as 
he fell, plunged the bayonet through the 
breast of his enemy, and, the lesson of the 
training camps coming to the fore in his 
supreme moment, he gurgled out the fero- 
cious "yah!" which he had been taught to 
utter with each bayonet thrust. 

The companies were split up into little 



62 THE IRON DIVISION 

groups. Back-to-back, they fired, thrust, 
hewed and hacked at the swarming enemy. 
No group knew how the others were doing. 
Many said afterwards they believed it was 
the end of all things for them, but they 
were resolved to die fighting and to take 
as many Huns with them as possible. 

Then came the great tragedy for those 
gallant companies. Something went wrong 
with the liaison service. It was such a 
thing as is always likely to happen where 
two forces of men, speaking different lan- 
guages, are working in co-operation. 

An officer suddenly woke to the fact 
that there were no French troops on the 
flanks of his command. The same realiza- 
tion was forced home to each of the four 
companies. The now famous "yielding 
defense" of the French had operated and 
their forces had fallen back in the face of 
the impetuous German onslaught. Four 
companies of Pennsylvanians alone faced 
the army of the German Crown Prince. 

In the midst of that Gehenna of fighting, 
no man has clearly fixed in his mind just 
what happened to cause the separation of 
the line. Certainly the French must have 
sent word that they were about to fall 



"KILL OR BE KILLED" 63 

back. Certainly the companies, as such, 
never received it. Possibly the runners 
conveying the orders never got through. 
Maybe the message was delivered to an 
officer who was killed before he could 
pass it on. 

Whatever the reason, the French fell 
back, and there were left in that fore- 
field of heroic endeavor only little milling, 
twisting groups, at intervals of several 
thousand feet, where our vaUant Pennsyl- 
vania lads fought on still for very dear life. 

The Boche hordes swept onward, pressing 
the French. The Americans were sur- 
rounded. Captain Cousart and a handful 
of his men were severed completely from 
the rest and taken prisoners. Lieutenant 
William II . Dyer, of Carney's Point, N. J., 
and Lieulenant Bateman, of Wayne, Pa., at 
the other flank of Company L, and almost 
half a platoon met a similar fate. Lieu- 
tenant Maurice J. McGuire was wounded. 

Lieutenant James R. Schoch, of Phila- 
delphia, was next in command of Com- 
pany L. Not far from him, Sergeant 
Frank Benjamin, also of Philadelphia, was 
still on his feet and pumping his rifle at 
top speed. From forty to fifty men of the 



64 THE IRON DIVISION 

company were within reach. The lieu- 
tenant and the sergeant managed to con- 
solidate them and pass the word to fall 
back, fighting. 

Part of the time they formed something 
like a circle, fighting outward in every 
direction, but always edging back to where 
they knew the support lines were. They 
literally fought their way through that 
part of the Prussian army that had gotten 
between them and the regimental lines. 

At times they fought from tree to tree, 
exactly as they had read of Indians doing. 
When they were pressed so closely that 
they had to have more room, they used 
their bayonets, and every time the Hun 
gave way before the "cold steel." 

Here and there they met, singly or in 
small groups, other men of the company 
who had become separated. These joined 
the party, so that when, after hours of 
this dauntless struggle. Lieutenant Schoch 
stood in front of headquarters, saluted and 
said: *'Sir, I have brought back what was 
left of L Company," he had sixty-seven 
men in the little column. 

During the day other men slipped from 
the shelter of the woods and scurried into 



"KILL OR BE KILLED" Q5 

the company lines, but there were sad 
holes in the ranks when the last one to 
appear came in. 

Company M was having the same kind 
of trouble. A swirl in the fighting opened 
a gap, and an avalanche of Germans plunged 
through, leaving Captain Mackey and a 
dozen men utterly separated on one side. 
It was impossible for them to rejoin the 
company, so they did from their posi- 
tion what the men of Company L 
were doing, fought their way through 
the Prussian-crowded woods to their own 
lines. 

Lieutenant William B. Brown, of Mos- 
cow, Pa., near Scran ton, senior officer 
remaining with the bulk of the company, 
became commander, but his responsibility 
was short-lived. He, too, was surrounded 
and made prisoner. 

Lieutenant Thomas B. W. Fales, of 
Philadelphia, now became commander of 
the little band, as the only officer left with 
the main body of the company. Lieu- 
tenants Edward Hitzeroth, also of Phila- 
delphia, and Walter L. Swarts, of Scranton, 
had disappeared, prisoners in the hands of 
the Germans, and Lieutenant Martin 



66 THE IRON DIVISION 

Wheeler, of Moscow, Pa., also had been 
separated with a few men. 

There were thirty -five men in Lieutenant 
Fales' command. He rallied and re-formed 
them and they began the backward fight 
to the support line. They made it in the 
face of almost insurmountable odds and, 
what is more, they arrived with half a 
dozen prisoners. Enough men of the com- 
pany had been picked up on the way to 
make up for casualties suffered during the 
running fight. 

Lieutenant Wheeler, who had been cut 
off with part of a platoon early in the 
rush, ordered his men to lie down in the 
trenches, where they were better able to 
stand off the Germans. He himself took a 
rifle from the hands of a dead man and a 
supply of ammunition and clambered out 
of the trench. Absolutely alone, he scouted 
along through the woods until he found a 
route that was relatively free from the 
German advance. 

Then he went back for his men, formed 
them and led them by the selected route, 
fighting as they went against such of the 
enemy as sought to deter them. All of 
this Lieutenant Wheeler performed while 



"KILL OR BE KILLED" 67 

suffering intense pain from a wound of the 
hand, inflicted early in the engagement. 
After reaching the regimental lines, he had 
first-aid treatment for the wound and con- 
tinued in the battle. 

Lieutenant Eugene R. Grossman found a 
wounded corporal who was unable to walk. 
He remained with the corporal and they 
became entirely isolated from all other 
Americans. They were given up for lost 
until the next night, when a message 
arrived that a patrol from another American 
unit on another part of the battle front, 
miles away, had brought in the lieutenant 
and the corporal, both utterly exhausted 
and almost unbalanced from their expe- 
rience. 

The lieutenant had dressed the corporal's 
wound roughly and then had started to 
lead him in. They became lost and wan- 
dered about for hours. At times the 
lieutenant carried the corporal on his back, 
when the wounded man became unable to 
walk. Again they were forced to take 
shelter in a thicket, when parties of Ger- 
mans approached, and to lie, in imminent 
fear of death, until the enemy groups had 
passed on. Finally they heard voices 



68 THE IRON DIVISION 

speaking in English and came on the 
American patrol. 

A message came back to the regimental 
lines from the beleaguered, hard-pressed 
M Company for ammunition. Supply 
Sergeant Charles McFadden, 3d, of Phila- 
delphia, set out with a detail to carry the 
ammunition forward. They were trapped 
in a little hamlet by the advancing Germans. 
McFadden sent his men back on the run, 
as they were badly outnumbered, but him- 
self remained behind to destroy the ammuni- 
tion to prevent its falling into the hands of 
the Germans. 

He saw men approaching him in the 
French uniform and believed he was safe, 
until they opened fire on him with rifles 
and machine guns — ^by no means the first 
instance in which the Germans made such 
use of uniforms other than their own. 
Sergeant McFadden saw it was hopeless to 
try longer to blow up his ammunition and 
fled. He ran into a machine gun manned 
by three Germans. He took them at an 
angle and before they could swing the 
gun around to bear on him, he was upon 
them. Two shots from his rifle and a 
swift lunge with the bayonet and the 



"KILL OR BE KILLED" 69 

machine gun crew was out of the way 
forever. 

The Germans were coming on, however, 
and to reach his own lines, McFadden had 
to run almost a mile up a steep hill. A 
bullet passed through his sleeve, another 
through his gas mask, one through his 
canteen, four dented his steel helmet and 
another shot the stock off his rifle, but he 
himself was untouched. He had taken off 
his outer shirt because of the heat. As he 
came up the hill toward his own lines, his 
comrades, not recognizing him in that 
wildly running figure, opened fire on him. 
He dropped to the ground, ripped off his 
undershirt and waving it as a flag of truce, 
made his panting way into the lines. 

The two companies of the 110th were 
passing through almost exactly similar 
experiences. Company B was surrounded 
and split. After a fight of twenty-four 
hours, during which it was necessary time 
after time to charge the Huns with bayonets 
and rally the group repeatedly to keep it 
from disintegrating. Captain Fish, whose 
home is in New Brighton, with Lieutenant 
Claude W. Smith, of New Castle, and 
Lieutenant Gilmore Hayman, of Berwyn, 



70 THE IRON DIVISION 

fought their way back with one hundred 
and twenty -three men. They brought with 
them several prisoners, and carried twenty- 
six of their own wounded. 

The rest of the company, surrounded 
in the woods, also made a running fight 
of it, but was scattered badly and drifted 
back to the regimental lines in little groups, 
leaving many comrades behind, dead, 
wounded and prisoners. 

The same kind of thing befell Company 
C, of which a little more than half returned. 
Captain Truxal, of Meyersdale, Pa., and 
Lieutenants Wilbur Schell and Samuel S. 
Crouse were surrounded by greatly supe- 
rior forces and taken prisoner with a group 
of their men. 

Corporal Alvey C. Martz, of Glencoe, 
Somerset County, with a patrol of six 
men, was out in advance of the company 
stringing barbed wire right along the river 
bank, when the German bombardment 
began. They dropped into shell holes. 
At the point where they lay, the wire 
remained intact and the Hun flood pas- 
sed aroimd them. When the hail of 
shells passed on in advance of the 
charging German lines, they arose, to 



"KILL OR BE KILLED" 71 

find themselves completely cut off from 
their comrades. 

"We've got to fight boys, so we might as 
well start it ourselves," said Martz, and his 
matter-of-fact manner had a strong steady- 
ing effect on his men. 

Remember that it was the first time any 
of the youths had been face to face with 
the Germans. It was the first time they 
had ever been called on to fight for their 
lives. Less than a year before they had 
been quiet civilians, going about their 
peaceful trades. Martz had lived with 
his parents on a mountain farm in a remote 
part of Pennsylvania, six miles from the 
nearest railway. Add to this the fact that 
they had learned in their brief soldiering 
career to lean heavily upon their officers for 
initiative, instructions and advice, and 
what these men did attains epic proportions. 

They came out of their shell holes shoot- 
ing. No crafty concealment, no game of 
hide and seek with the Hun for them. 
Lest their firing might not attract enough 
attention, they let out lusty yells. Groups 
of Germans before them, apparently be- 
lieving they were being attacked from the 
flank by a strong force, fled. The seven 



72 THE IRON DIVISION 

men gained the shelter of the woods. For 
two hours they worked their way through 
the forest, fighting desperately when neces- 
sary, and hunting anxiously for the place 
where they knew their company had been. 
It was not there. 

When, at last, they glimpsed American 
uniforms through the trees they thought 
they had come up with the company. 
But it was only Sergeant Robert A. Floto, 
of Meyersdale, Pa., of their own company, 
with half a dozen men. 

Corporal Martz relinquished command 
of the party to Sergeant Floto. A little 
farther on they met another American, who 
joined the party. He was "mad all 
through" and on the verge of tears from 
anxiety and exasperation at his own help- 
lessness. 

"There were seven of us cut off from the 
company," he told them, "and we ran 
slap-bang into all the Boche in the world. 
I was several feet behind the other guys 
and the Fritzes didn't see me. It came 
so sudden, the boys didn't have a chance 
to do anything. When I took a peek 
through the trees, about a million Germans 
were around, and my gang was just being 



"KILL OR BE KILLED" 73 

led back toward the river by two Hun 
officers. I figured I couldn't do anybody 
any good by firing into that mob, so I 
came away to look for help." 

"Guess we'd better see what we can do 
for those fellows," remarked Martz in the 
same cool, almost disinterested manner he 
had used before. Everybody wanted to 
go, but Martz insisted it was a job for only 
two men. As a companion he picked John 
J. Mullen, of Philadelphia. Mullen was 
not a former Guardsman. He was a 
selected man, sent from Camp Meade sev- 
eral months before with a draft to fill the 
ranks of the Twenty-eighth Division. But 
he had proved himself in many a training 
camp to be, as his comrades put it, "a 
regular fellow." 

So Corporal Martz and Mullen, sur- 
rounded by a goodly part of the Crown 
Prince's crack troops, 3,000 miles from 
home, in a country they never had seen 
before, cut loose from the little group of 
their comrades, turned their backs on the 
American lines and hiked out through the 
woods toward Hunland to succor their 
fellows in distress. 

The little prisoner convoy was not mak- 



74 THE IRON DIVISION 

ing great speed and the two Americans 
soon overtook them. The first torrent of 
the German advance had now passed far 
to their rear. The two Americans circled 
around through the woods and lay in 
ambush for the party. The prisoners, 
because of the narrowness of the paths 
through the woods, were marching in 
single file, one German officer in the lead, 
the other bringing up the rear. 

"You take the one in front and I'll 
take that bird on the end," said Martz to 
Mullen. Martz was something of a sharp- 
shooter. Once he had gone to camp with 
the West Virginia National Guard, just 
over the state line from his home, and 
came back with a medal as a marksman, 
although he was only substituting for a 
man who was unable to attend the camp. 

They drew careful bead. Out of the 
corner of his eye Mullen could watch 
Martz, at the same time he sighted on his 
German officer. Martz nodded his head 
and the two rifles cracked simultaneously. 
Both officers dropped dead. The prisoners 
looked about them, stunned with surprise. 
Martz and Mullen stepped out of the 
woods. There was no time for thanks or 



"KILL OR BE KILLED" 75 

congratulations. They hurried back the 
way they had come. The released men 
had no trouble arming themselves with 
rifles and ammunition from the dead lying 
in the woods. 

They soon overtook Sergeant Floto and 
his men. The party was now of more 
formidable size and as the Germans by 
this time were broken up into rather small 
groups, the Americans no longer felt the 
necessity of skulking through the woods, 
but started out as a belligerent force, not 
hunting fight, but moving not a step to 
avoid one. 

A few hours later they joined another 
group of survivors, under Captain Charles 
L. McLain, of Indiana, Pa., who took 
command. He vetoed the daring rush 
through the Hun-infested woods by day- 
light and ordered that the party lie con- 
cealed during the day and proceed to the 
American lines after nightfall. 

"We need a rear guard to protect us 
against surprise," said Captain McLain, 
and after what had gone before it seemed 
but natural that Corporal Martz and 
Private Mullen should be selected for the 
job when they promptly volunteered. With 



76 THE IRON DIVISION 

little further adventure the party arrived 
in the regimental lines after about thirty- 
six hours of almost continuous contact 
with the Germans. 

In each regiment the survivors of this 
first real battle of the troops of the Penn- 
sylvania Division were formed into one 
company for the time being, until replace- 
ment drafts arrived to make up for the 
heavy losses. 

This, then, is the tale of what happened 
when, as so many soldier letters have 
related, these four companies were "cut 
to pieces," and this is why L and M com- 
panies, of the 109th, and B and C com- 
panies, of the 110th, figured so largely in 
the casualties for a time. 



CHAPTER V 

The Guard Stands Fast 

BACK in the regimental lines, while 
the four companies were being 
mauled badly by the Germans, anxi- 
ety had gone steadily from bad to worse. 

Enduring the storm of shells with which 
the Germans continued to thresh the back 
areas for miles, the troops did not have, 
for some time after the battle began, the 
excitement of combat to loosen their tight- 
strung nerves. 

They saw the French come filtering out 
of the woods before them, and watched 
eagerly for their comrades, but their com- 
rades did not come and, as time passed, 
it was realized the detached companies 
were having a hard time. 

The vanguard of the Prussians reached 
the edge of the woods shortly before day- 
break. Men on watch in the American 
trenches saw hulking gray-clad figures slink- 
ing among the trees close to the forest's 
fringe and opened fire. As the day grew 

(77) 



78 THE IRON DIVISION 

the firing on both sides waxed hotter, and 
soon a long Hne of the enemy advanced 
from the shelter of the bois. They were 
met by a concentration of rifle, machine 
gun and cannon fire such as no force could 
withstand. The first waves seemed simply 
to wither away like chaff before a wind. 
The following ones slackened their pace, 
hesitated a moment or two then turned 
and ran for the timber. 

From that moment, our men were them- 
selves again. They saw the Germans were 
not invincible. They themselves had 
broken up a Prussian Guards' attack. All 
their confidence, self-reliance, initiative, 
elan, came to the fore. They felt them- 
selves unbeatable. 

But one swallow does not make a sum- 
mer, nor does one repulse of an enemy make 
a victory. Time after time the Germans 
returned to the assault. Groups of them 
gained the wheat fields, where they felt 
protected from the fire of our men. Obvi- 
ously, they expected to crawl through the 
wheat until they were on the southern 
edge of the fields, where, lying closely 
protected, they could pick the Americans 
off at leisure. 



THE GUARD STANDS FAST 79 

AVhole platoons of our men volunteered to 
meet this move and were permitted to crawl 
forward and enter the wheat. Then ensued a 
game of hide and seek, Germans and Ameri- 
cans stalking each other as big game is stalked, 
flat on their faces in the growing grain. 

But the Germans were no match for 
Americans at this kind of thing. There 
is something — a kind of heritage from our 
pioneer, Indian-fighting ancestors, prob- 
ably — that gives to an American lad a 
natural advantage at this sort of fighting, 
and scores of Germans remained behind 
in the shelter of the wheat when the tide 
of battle had passed far away, with the 
spires of grain nodding and whispering a 
requiem over them. 

Before dawn of that fifteenth of July, 
word was received from Colonel McAlex- 
ander, commanding the 39th Infantry of 
the old regular army, which was in front 
and to the right of the 109th, that the 
Germans had crossed the river and pene- 
trated the Allied lines. He added that 
if they gained a foothold in the Bois de 
Conde, or Conde Wood, a high, wooded 
tract just north of Monthurel, the position 
of the 39th would be seriously menaced. 



80 THE IRON DIVISION 

Captain William C. Williams, command- 
ing Company H, 109th, and Captain 
Edward J. Meehan, commanding Company 
D, of the same regiment, and both Philadel- 
phians, were ordered into the wood. The 
companies were led out and took positions on 
both sides of a narrow ravine in the wood. 

Presently the French began to appear, 
falling back. First they came one or two 
at a time, then in larger groups. As they 
hurried by they gave some indication of 
the heavy fighting they had gone through 
and which still was going forward up 
toward the river. 

Captain Williams took a platoon of his 
company to establish it in a strong posi- 
tion to protect the flank of the company. 
While doing so, the firing, which had been 
growing closer all the time, broke out right 
at hand and Captain Williams discovered 
he and his men were cut off from the com- 
pany. The Captain was shot in the hand 
at the first fire and several of his men were 
wounded, but the Captain rallied his little 
party and they fought their way back and 
rejoined the company. Captain Williams 
was wounded twice more, but so serious 
was the emergency that he had a first aid 



THE GUARD STANDS FAST 81 

dressing applied and continued the fight 
without further treatment. 

Both Captain WiUiams and Captain 
Meehan since have been promoted to the 
rank of Major and have been awarded 
Distinguished Service Crosses. Major Will- 
iams is an old regular army man. With the 
rank of sergeant, he was attached to the 
former First Pennsylvania Infantry as an 
instructor and served in this capacity 
during the Mexican border duty in 1916. 
Later he was commissioned Captain and 
assigned to command Company H. 

A party of Huns made their way through 
the woods to a copse on the flank of the 
first battalion of the 109th, where they 
established a strong machine gun nest. 
From that position their fire was especially 
harassing to the battalion, and it was 
found necessary to clean out that nest if 
the position was to be maintained. 

Accordingly Captain Meehan led Com- 
pany D out from the shelter of their trench 
without the special protection of artillery 
fire. A piece of shell caught Captain Mee- 
han in the shoulder and the impact half 
swung him around, but he kept on. Cap- 
tain Felix R. Campuzano, also of Phila- 



82 THE IRON DIVISION 

delphia, with B Company, went out in 
support of Captain Meehan's men, and 
Captain Campuzano was struck in the 
hand. 

Company D spread out Hke a fan and 
stalked that copse as smoothly and fault- 
lessly as ever a black buck was stalked 
in the heart of Africa by an expert hunter. 
Occasionally a doughboy would get a 
glimpse of a Boche gunner. There would 
be a crack from the thin American line, 
always advancing, and virtually every shot 
meant one Hun less. There were few 
wasted bullets in that fight. The storm 
of lead from the machine guns was apprecia- 
bly less by the time the Americans entered 
the shelter of the woods. Once they 
reached the trees, there was a wild clamor 
of shouts, cries, shots, the clatter of steel 
on steel. 

Presently this died down and Americans 
began to emerge from the woods. Not so 
many came back as went out, but of the 
Huns who had crept forward to establish 
the nest, none returned to their own lines. 
Our men brought back several enemy 
machine guns. 

Captain WiUiams, still with H Company 



THE GUARD STANDS FAST 83 

in a well-advanced position, was pressed 
closely by Huns, but believed his position 
could be held with help. He despatched 
George L. MacElroy, of Philadelphia, a 
bugler, with a message to Colonel Brown, 
asking for assistance. 

Nineteen years old, and only recently 
graduated from his status as one of the 
best Boy Scouts in his home city, young 
MacElroy trudged into the open space be- 
fore Colonel Brown's quarters, saluted and 
stood stiff and soldierly while he delivered 
his message. He looked very young and 
boyish, though his grimy face was set in 
stern, wearied lines under his steel helmet. 

Colonel Brown read the message and 
started to give an order but checked him- 
self as he noticed the messenger swaying 
slightly on his feet. 

"My boy, how long has it been since 
you had food?" he asked. 

The question, and particularly the kindly 
tone, were too much for the overwrought 
nerves of the lad. 

"Forty -eight hours, sir," he responded, 
and then his stoicism gave way and he 
collapsed. 

**Get something to eat here and take a 



84 THE IRON DIVISION 

sleep," said the Colonel. "You need not 
go back." 

" No, sir, " was the reply. " My company 
is up there in the woods, fighting hard, 
and I am going back to it. Captain Will- 
iams depends on me, sir." 
^ And back he went, although he was per- 
suaded to rest a few minutes while a lunch 
was prepared. He was asked to descrioe 
his experiences on that journey through 
the German-infested woods, but the sum 
of his description, given in a deprecatory 
manner, was: "I just crawled along and 
got here." 

With such spirit as this actuating our 
men, it is small wonder that the Germans 
found themselves battling against a stone 
wall of defense that threatened momen- 
tarily to topple forward on them and crush 
them. 

MacElroy was wounded slightly and 
suffered a severe case of shell shock a few 
days later. He was in the hospital many 
weeks and was awarded the French War 
Cross for his bravery. 

Bugler MacElroy was by no means the 
only lad who did not eat for forty-eight 
hours. Those in the forward lines had 



THE GUARD STANDS FAST 85 

entered the fight with only two days' 
rations. Many of them threw this away to 
lighten themselves for the contest. Subse- 
quently food reached them only inter- 
mittently and in small quantities, for it 
was almost an impossible task to carry it 
up from the rear through that vortex of 
fighting. 

Sleep they needed even more than food. 
For five days and nights hundreds of the 
men slept only for a few moments at a 
time, not more than three hours all told. 
They became as automatons, fighting on 
though they had lost much of the sense 
of feeling. It was asserted by medical 
men that this loss of sleep acted almost 
as an anesthetic on many, so that wounds 
that ordinarily would have incapacitated 
them through sheer pain, were regarded 
hardly at all. When opportunity offered, 
more than one went sound asleep on his 
feet, leaning against the wall of a trench. 

After that first splendid repulse of the 
German attack, the Crown Prince's forces, 
with typical Teuton stubborness, launched 
assault after assault against our line. Offi- 
cers could be seen here and there, mingling 
with the German soldiers, beating them and 



86 THE IRON DIVISION 

kicking them forward in the face of the 
murderous American fire. 

It was during this almost continuous game 
of attack and repulse that there occurred one 
of the most remarkable and dramatic events 
of the whole period. The Boche had been 
gnawing into the lines of the 110th, in the 
center of the Pennsylvania front, until it 
seemed nothing could stop them. Probably 
the most terrific pressure along that sector 
was exerted against this point. 

For twenty-five hours the 110th had given 
virtually constant battle, and ofiicers and 
men felt they soon must give way and 
fall back. Y. M. C. A. men serving with 
the Americans had established themselves 
in a dugout in the face of a low bluff facing 
away from the enemy, where they and their 
supplies were reasonably safe from shell 
fire, and from these dugouts they issued 
forth, with a courage that won the admira- 
tion of the fighting men, to carry chocolate, 
cigarettes and other bits of comfort to the 
hard pressed doughboys and to render 
whatever aid they could. Several of them 
pleaded to be allowed to take rifles and help 
withstand the onslaught, but this, of course 
was forbidden. 



THE GUARD STANDS FAST 87 

The Rev. Francis A. La Violette, of 
Seattle, Wash., one of the Y. M. C. A. 
workers, had lain down in the dugout for 
a few minutes' rest when he heard a flutter 
of wings about the entrance. He found a 
tired and frightened pigeon, with a message 
tube fastened to its leg. Removing the 
carrier, he found a message written in 
German, which he was unable to read. 
Ke knew the moment was a critical one 
for the whole line. He knew there were 
grave fears that the Germans were about 
to break through and that if they did 
there would be little to hold them from 
a dash on Paris. 

He rushed the message to headquarters,, 
where it was translated. It was a cry of 
desperation from the Germans, intended 
for their reserve forces in the rear. It 
said that, unless reinforcements were sent 
at once, the German line at that point 
would be forced to retire. The pigeon had 
become lost in the murk of battle and 
delivered the message to the wrong side 
of the fighting front. 

In half an hour word had gone down 
the line, and tanks, artillery and thousands 
of French troops were rushing to the threat- 



88 THE IRON DIVISION 

ened point. With this assistance and the 
knowledge that the Germans were already 
wavering, the Pennsylvanians advanced 
with determination and hurled the enemy 
back. Headquarters was dumfounded, 
when prisoners were examined, to learn 
that six divisions of Prussians, about 
75,000 men, had been opposing the 
Allied force and had been compelled to 
call for help. 

On the right of our line the enemy thrust 
forward strong local attacks, driving our 
men from St. Agnan, and La Chapelle- 
Manthodon. St. Agnan, three miles south 
of the nearest spot on the Marne, was the 
farthest point of the German advance. 
Almost immediately the 109th Infantry 
and 103d Engineers, in conjunction with 
French Chausseurs Alpin (Blue Devils), 
launched a counter attack which drove the 
Germans pell mell out of the villages and 
started them on their long retreat. 

Just before this counter attack began 
the 109th was being harassed again by a 
machine gun nest, and this time Com- 
pany K was sent out to "do the job." It 
did, in as workmanlike a manner as D 
Company had on the other occasion. Lieu- 



THE GUARD STANDS FAST 89 

tenant Walter Fiechter, of Philadelphia, 
was wounded, as were several enlisted men. 

When the counter attack finally was 
launched Captain Walter McC. Gearty, 
also a Philadelphian, acting as major of the 
First Battalion of the 109th, led the advance 
of that regiment. They ran into a machine 
gun nest that was spitting bullets like a 
summer rain. The stream of lead caught 
Captain Gearty full in the front, and he 
dropped, the first officer of his rank in the 
old National Guard of Pennsylvania to 
meet death in the war. 

His men, frantic at the loss of a beloved 
officer, plunged forw^ard more determinedly 
than ever and wiped out that machine gun 
nest to a man, seized the guns and ammuni- 
tion and turned them on the already fleeing 
Boche. 

The Americans had discovered by this 
time the complete truth of what their 
British instructors had told them — ^that 
the Hun hates and fears the bayonet more 
than any other weapon of warfare. So 
they wasted few bullets. Rifle fire, they 
discovered, was a mighty thing in defense, 
when a man has a chance to steady himself 
and aim with precision while the enemy is 



90 THE IRON DIVISION 

doing the advancing. But when conditions 
are reversed, the best rifleman has httle 
chance to shine in pressing forward in an 
attack, so it was the bayonet that was used 
this time. 

The men had gone "over the top" with- 
out a barrage, but they had the best pro- 
tection in the world — self-confidence, which 
the Hun had not. The Prussians had had 
a taste of American fighting such as they 
had thought never to experience, and for 
thousands of them the mere sight of that 
advancing fine of grim, set faces, preceded 
by bristling bayonet points, was enough. 
They did not wait to be "tickled" with the 
point. 

Others, however, stood their ground 
boldly enough and gave battle. As had 
been the case for several months, they 
depended little on the individual rifleman, 
but put virtually their whole trust in 
machine guns and artillery. With their 
ranks shorn of their old-time confidence and 
many of their men fleeing in panic rather 
than come to grips with the Americans and 
French, there was little chance to stem that 
charge, however, and the enemy fell back 
steadily, even rapidly, to the Marne. 



CHAPTER VI 

BocHE IN Full. Flight 

IT was in following up the German 
retreat from their "farthest south" 
back to the Marne, that our men 
learned the truth of what they had heard 
and read so often, that the German is as 
good a fighter as any in the world when 
he is in masses, but degenerates into a 
sickening coward when left alone or in 
small groups. 

It was during this time, too, that they 
learned the truth of the oft-repeated charge 
that Germans were left behind, chained 
to machine guns so they could not escape, 
to hinder an advancing enemy and make 
his losses as heavy as possible. 

Repeatedly groups of our men advanced 
on machine gun nests in the face of vicious 
fire until they were in a position to make 
a sudden rush and, on reaching the guns, 
were greeted by uplifted hands and bleats 
of *' Americans, kamerads! kamerads!" 

On the nature of the individual Ameri- 

(91) 



92 THE IRON DIVISION 

cans depended what happened. Some- 
times the Germans were released from 
their chains and sent to the rear as pris- 
oners. Sometimes the bayonet was used 
as the only answer to such tactics. And 
who shall blame either action? 

When, as frequently happened, it was 
a case of man to man, the Pennsylvanians 
found that it was a rare German who 
would stand up and fight. Long after- 
ward they told gleefully of finding, here 
and there, a Hun who bravely gave battle, 
for our men frankly preferred to kill their 
men fighting rather than to slaughter them 
or take them prisoner. 

Some of the Americans were so eager to 
keep close on the heels of the retreating 
Huns that they did not stop long enough 
thoroughly to clean up machine gun nests 
and other strong points. Groups of the 
Boche hid until the main body of the 
Americans had passed on, then raked 
them from the rear with machine gun 
and rifle fire, snipers concealed in trees 
being particularly annoying in this way. 

In scores of instances our men found 
machine guns and their gunners both tied 
fast in trees, so that neither could fall, 



BOCHE IN FULL FLIGHT 93 

even when the operator was shot. It was 
reported rehably but unofficially that ma- 
chine gun nests had been found where 
the Germans, in the short time they had 
been on the ground, had arranged aerial 
tramways of rope from tree to tree, so 
that if a machine gun nest were discovered 
in one tree and the gunners shot, the guns 
could be slid over to another tree on the 
ropes and another group of men could set 
them going again. 

Many of the Huns "played dead" until 
the American rush was past, then opened 
fire on the rear. This is an old trick, but 
Allied soldiers who tried it early in the war 
discovered that the Germans countered it 
by having men come along after a charging 
body of troops, bayoneting everybody on 
the field to make sure all were dead. The 
Germans, however, knew they were safe 
in trying it with our men, for they were 
well aware Americans did not bayonet 
wounded men or dead bodies. 

Sergeant McFadden, who has been men- 
tioned before, was making his way through 
the woods with a single companion when 
he noticed an apparently dead Boche in a 
rifle pit. He got a glimpse of the face. 



94 THE IRON DIVISION 

however, and noticed the eyes were closed 
so tightly the man was ''squinting" from 
the effort. McFadden jabbed his bayonet 
in the German's leg, whereupon he leaped 
to his feet and seized the rifle from the 
astonished American's hand. He threw it 
up to fire, but before he could pull the 
trigger, McFadden's companion shot him. 

At one point, below Fossoy, the Ger- 
mans not only went back to the river, but 
actually crossed it in the face of the 110th 
Infantry's advance. Reaching the banks 
of the river, however, the enemy was 
within the protection of his big guns, 
which immediately laid down such fire 
that it was utterly impossible for the 
Americans and French to remain. Hav- 
ing had a real taste of triumph, the Pennsyl- 
vanians were loath to let go, but fell back 
slowly, unpressed by the Germans, to their 
former positions. 

It was on this forward surge back to the 
Marne that Pennsylvania's soldiers began 
to get real first-hand evidence of Hun 
methods of fighting — the kind of thing 
that turned three-fourths of the world 
into active enemies of them and their 
ways, and sickened the very souls of all 



BOCHE IN FULL FLIGHT 95 

who learned what creatures in the image 
of man can do. 

They came on machine gun nests, in 
the advance between Mezy, MouHns and 
Courtemont-Varennes, to find their com- 
rades who had been taken prisoner in the 
eariier fighting tied out in front in such 
a way as to fall first victims to their friends' 
fire should an attack be made on the 
gunners. Men told, with tears rolling 
down their cheeks, how these brave lads, 
seeing the advancing Americans, shouted 
to them: 

"Shoot! Shoot! Don't stop for us!" 

They saw eight airplanes, painted with 
the French colors, swoop over the lines, 
soar low near a barn where a battery had 
been planted and drop tons of bombs, 
shaking the earth and demolishing every- 
thing about as if an earthquake had oc- 
curred. Fortunately in this instance, the 
battery had been moved to another loca- 
tion, but the same planes poured streams 
of machine gun bullets into the ranks of 
our men until driven off by machine gun 
and anti-aircraft fire. 

Not the least of the difficulties of our 
men was the fact that the Germans mingled 



96 THE IRON DIVISION 

a certain quantity of gas shells with their 
high explosives and shrapnel. Ordinarily, 
soldiers learn to distinguish gas shells from 
others by the difference in the sound of 
the explosion, but in such a bombardment 
as this the sounds are so commingled that 
even that protection is denied. 

Therefore, it was necessary for the men 
to wear their gas masks almost continu- 
ously. While these are a protection against 
the poisonous fumes, they are far from 
being pleasant. Not only is it more 
difficult to see and breathe, but what 
air is inhaled is impregnated with chem- 
icals used to neutralize the gas. Yet for 
hours at a time, the men had to go through 
the inferno of fighting under the handicap 
of the masks. 

Men returned to the rear with great 
burns upon their faces, hands and bodies. 
From some the clothes were burned away 
almost entirely, and others reeled along 
like drunken men, nearly blinded. They 
reported that they had seen Germans in 
the woods with what looked like large 
tanks on their backs. As the Americans 
approached to give battle, these Huns 
turned short nozzles toward the oncoming 



BOCHE IN FULL FLIGHT 97 

soldiers, and from the nozzles leaped great 
streams of flame, extending as much as 
thirty feet. 

A part of the 111th Infantry confronted, 
at one time, a small wood, which the 
French believed masked a strong machine 
gun nest. A patrol was organized to re- 
connoiter the position, composed partly of 
volunteers and partly of men chosen by 
ofBcers. One of the volunteers was Private 
Joseph Bennett, of Gulph Mills, Pa., near 
Norristown, a member of the headquarters 
company of the 111th. The party con- 
sisted of twelve enlisted men under com- 
mand of a French lieutenant. 

They advanced with the greatest care, 
their line extended to more than the normal 
skirmish distance. There was not a sign 
of life about the wood. Coming closer, 
they saw the body of an American soldier 
propped against a tree. The French officer 
signaled for the men to close in toward 
this point. As they did so, four machine 
guns, concealed by the Hun ghouls behind 
the American body, raked the thin line of 
approaching men with a terrific fire. Every 
man in the party except Bennett was killed 
instantly. Bennett fired one shot and 



98 THE IRON DIVISION 

saw one of the Boche plunge forward from 
his hiding place and lie still. Then a 
stream of machine gun bullets struck his 
rifle and destroyed it. 

Bennett flung himself to the ground ^nd 
dragged himself to the body of the French 
lieutenant. He took a supply of smoke 
bombs with which the lieutenant had in- 
tended to signal the result of his expedi- 
tion. Setting these in operation, Bennett 
heaved them over in front of the machine 
gun position. They promptly threw up 
such a dense cloud that the Gulph Mills 
man was able to stand up. Under cover 
of the smoke he advanced and threw hand 
grenades into the position, killing the 
remaining three Germans. Then he re- 
turned to his regiment, the sole survivor 
of the scouting party of thirteen men. 
The Distinguished Service Cross was 
awarded to him for that act. 

Bennett had another remarkable experi- 
ence. He is one of the biggest men in his 
regiment, standing a little more than six 
feet, and weighing about 200 pounds. 
He was with Private Joseph Wolf, of 
Pottstown, in the advance when they saw 
a sniper in a tree just drawing a bead on 



BOCHE IN FULL FLIGHT 99 

an American lieutenant. Bennett was 
almost directly under the tree, and coolly 
picked off the sniper. In falling, the body 
dislodged a second badly frightened Ger- 
man. Bennett, watching the grim little 
tableau, had not lowered his gun, and the 
live German fell directly on his gun, impal- 
ing himself on the bayonet. The force of 
the blow almost dropped the big American. 

The men of the 111th were no whit 
behind their comrades of the other regi- 
ments in the intensity of their fighting 
spirit nor in their accomplishments. In- 
dividuals performed the same kind of 
heroic feats, whatever regiment they called 
their own. In other words, all were true 
Americans. 

Corporal William Loveland, of Chester, 
with Company B, 111th, single-handed, 
captured seventeen of the enemy, and was 
decorated for his bravery. He was so 
badly wounded in the last campaign of the 
war that he died November 5th. 

It was a little later, after they had 
driven the Germans back to the Marne 
and had retired again to their original 
positions, that there came to the Pennsyl- 
vanians a highly pleasing estimate of their 



100 THE IRON DIVISION 

prowess as viewed by the British. A 
runner from division headquarters brought 
up a copy of a great London daily newspaper 
in which appeared the following comment : 

''The feature of the battle on which the 
eyes of all the world are fixed, and those 
of the enemy with particular intentness, 
is the conduct of the American troops. 
The magnificent counter-attack in which 
the Americans flung back the Germans on 
the Marne after they had crossed was 
much more than the outstanding event 
of the fighting. It was one of the histor- 
ical incidents of the whole war in its moral 
significance." 

One other bit of cheering news came to 
them, passing down through the various 
ranks from headquarters. It told some- 
thing of what the intelligence officers had 
gleaned from the study of documents taken 
from enemy prisoners and dead. One of 
these latter had been an intelligence officer. 
He was killed after writing a report on the 
quality of the American troops and before 
he had a chance to send it along on its 
way to German great headquarters. Our 
men learned that in this report he had 
written that their morale was not yet 



BOCHE IN FULL FLIGHT 101 

broken, that they were young and vigorous 
soldiers and nearly, if not quite, of the 
caliber of shock troops, needing only more 
experience to make them so. 

With his troops back at the Marne and 
balked from moving southward, the enemy 
now tried to move eastward along the 
banks of the river toward Epernay. The 
checking of this move fell to other troops, 
chiefly French, while our men lay in their 
trenches, the victims of a continuous, vin- 
dictive bombardment, without apparent 
purpose other than the breaking of that 
morale of which the dead intelligence 
oflficer had written. 

The men did not know what had hap- 
pened. They knew only they w^anted 
either to get away from that sullen bom- 
bardment or get out and do something. 
They were not aware that Foch had 
unleashed his armies between Chateau- 
Thierry and Soissons and that the enemy 
already was in flight from the Marne, 
the bombardment being designed to keep 
those terrible Americans in their trenches 
until the last Huns had recrossed the 
river to begin the long retreat northward. 

Until July 21st, the Pennsylvania regi- 



102 THE IRON DIVISION 

ments hugged their trenches, nursed their 
minor hurts and their deadly fatigue, and 
wondered what was going on out yonder 
where the fate of Paris and possibly of the 
war was being decided. The roar of 
artillery had gradually died down and the 
men realized that the front was moving 
away from them. This could mean only 
one thing — a German retreat: and our 
soldiers were gladdened, despite the sad 
gaps in their ranks, with the knowledge 
that they had played the parts of real 
men and splendid soldiers in making that 
retreat compulsory. 

Uppermost in the mind of more than 
one old national guardsman, as evidenced 
by scores of letters received since that 
time, was the thought that the despised 
*'tin soldiers" of other days had "come 
through" with flying colors, and had put 
their fine old organization well beyond the 
touch of the finger of scorn. 

So, on July 21st, the regiments were 
ordered back out of the ruck of battle and 
away from the scene of their hard six days 
for a rest. They went only a few miles 
back, but it was a blessed relief for the 
men — ^too much and too sudden for some. 



BOCHE IN FULL FLIGHT 103 

Men who had come through the battle 
apparently unscathed, now collapsed utteily 
as their nerves gave way with the release 
of the tension, like the snapping of a tight- 
coiled spring, and more than one went 
under the physicians' care from that rest 
camp, miles away from German fire. 

Not all were allowed to rest, however. 
Details were sent to the scene of the 
recent fighting to clear up and salvage 
the wreckage of war, to hunt for wounded 
and to bury the dead. This was not the 
least trying of their experiences for the 
men engaged. The bodies of well-liked 
officers were dragged out from tangles of 
dead Huns and buried tenderly, each grave 
being marked by a little wooden cross on 
which was placed one of the identification 
disks taken from the dead man, the second 
being turned over to statistical officers 
for record purposes. 

A week had passed since the first engage- 
ment, and the burying squads had no 
pleasant task, from the physical stand- 
point, entirely aside from the sadness and 
depression it entailed. The men got little 
touches of spiritual uplift from things they 
found on the battlefield. Such as, for 



104 THE IRON DIVISION 

instance, the body of little Alexander 
Myers, of Green Lane, Montgomery 
County, a private in Company M, 109th, 
who had been known in boxing circles 
about Philadelphia as '* Chick" Myers. 
He was found with five dead Boche about 
him. And the body of Sergeant Coburn, 
of the same company, who had been mar- 
ried two days before he sailed for France, 
was found prone on an automatic rifle, 
with the ground before him literally covered 
with dead Huns. 

In the burial detail of the 111th was 
Harry Lewis McFarland, of Fallston, Pa., 
near New Brighton, a private in Company 
B. He had been grieving bitterly over the 
fact tliat his brother, Verner, had been 
missing since the company was cut up 
so badly in the first German advance. 
Moving about among the dead, he turned 
one over, face up. It was his brother. 
In his hands was his rifle, still clenched 
tightly. In front of him, in such position 
that it was plain he had done the execu- 
tion himself, lay seven dead Germans. 

Such w^as the spirit with which our men 
fought and died, and such was the price 
they charged for their lives. 



BOCHE IN FULL FLIGHT 105 

Back in the rest camp, the companies 
were mustered and the rolls checked off 
with the known statistics regarding those 
not present. Figures on the casualties of 
the 109th in those six days of action have 
reached this country. They show four 
officers and 75 enlisted men killed; ten 
officers and 397 enlisted men wounded; 
six officers and 311 enlisted men missing, 
a total of twenty officers and 783 men, or 
803 casualties for the regiment, out of 
something more than 3,000 men — approxi- 
mately twenty-five per cent of losses. The 
110th suffered about as heavily, and the 
111th scarcely less. The 103d Engineers 
had been more fortunate. Their hard time 
was yet to come. 

It was in this period that the weather 
changed. The fine, hot, sunshiny days 
gave way to pouring rains, which turned 
the roads into quagmires and added im- 
measurably to the miseries of the men. 
However, officers commented on the fact 
that there was little complaining. Men 
who had grumbled in the training camps 
back in America when the beans were 
cold for lunch, or when they had an extra 
hour's work to do, or when the wind blew 



106 THE IRON DIVISION 

chill while they were "on sentry go," 
now faced actual hardship with dauntless 
spirit and smiles. In some places the men 
marched through mud up to their knees. 
At night they slept in the open with the 
rain pouring on them. When the hot sun 
shone once more, their clothing steamed. 

More cheering news came to the men 
while they rested. The companies that 
had been in the front line with the French 
when the Germans drove across the river 
and had suffered the heaviest, were men- 
tioned in special orders for their gallantry, 
and the report went down the line that 
several of the officers and men were to 
receive decorations. 

With indomitable good humor, which 
served to cover their hurts to some extent 
— as many a small boy laughs to keep from 
weeping — officers and men made the most 
of things that struck a funny vein. In 
this connection, there was much "kidding" 
of Captain George M. Orf, of Philadelphia, 
statistical officer of the 109th. 

Sunday, July 14th, Captain Orf received 
his discharge from the army because he 
had been found to be suffering from an 
ailment that unfitted him for military duty. 



BOCHE IN FULL FLIGHT 107 



He wrote a request at once for a re-exami- 
nation and revocation of the order of dis- 
charge. Pending action on his request, he 
was, technically and to all intents and 
purposes, a civilian. Actually, he went 
right on with his duties, "carried on" 
throughout the German drive and the 
counter-attack, came through without a 
scratch, and stayed right with the regiment 
through further hard fighting and cam- 
paigning to August 9th. Then he received 
final word, a rejection of his appeal and 
orders to proceed home at once. During 
this period, his fellow officers declined to 
address him by his military title, but went 
out of their way to speak to him and of 
him as "Mister Orf." 



CHAPTER VII 

Bombed From the Air 

il FTER only a few days and nights of 
/Jk rest, the regiments were moved off 
•^ "^ to the southward a few miles, then 
turned sharply to the west, thus passing 
around a district that still was being shelled 
heavily by the Germans in an effort to 
hold the Allied force back until they could 
get their own materials out of the Chateau- 
Thierry salient. 

Thus they came again to the Marne, 
which turns sharply south at Chateau- 
Thierry, and here they made camp again 
and received contingents of "casuals" — 
that is, men unattached to any regiments 
— ^who had been sent to fill up the depleted 
ranks. The shattered companies were 
refilled, Companies L and M, of the 109th, 
and B and C, of the 110th, becoming 
almost new organizations. The newcomers 
were made welcome and proved to be good 
soldier material, but few of them were 
Pennsylvanians. 

(108) 



BOMBED FROM THE AIR 109 

The march was resumed July 24 th over a 
road paralleHng the railroad line from Paris 
to Chateau-Thierry, which followed the 
course of the river rather closely, except 
for its numerous bends. The doughboys 
were anxious to see Chateau-Thierry, which 
already, even among these lads who were 
out of touch with events in other parts of 
the war area, had loomed large in their 
talk. They had heard much of it and of the 
achievements there and in the vicinity of 
other American troops, notably the marines, 
and they were eager to see it. 

They saw it, however, only in glimpses 
from the far side of the river, for they 
kept on up the road and did not cross the 
river there. 

That night they bivouacked in woods 
along the Marne. Here the 109th had its 
first taste of night air raiding. The regi- 
ment halted at the little town of Chierry, 
just east of Chateau-Thierry, but on the 
south bank. One battalion remained 
there, another crossed the river on 
pontoon bridges, left behind by the 
French and Americans now in pursuit 
of the fleeing Germans, and remained in 
the hamlet of Brasles for the night, and 



110 THE IRON DIVISION 

the third was ordered out to guard the 
bridges. x 

About three o'clock in the morning 
sentries heard the whir of airplane motors, 
and fired their rifles. The sharpshooters 
of the regiment rushed to the edge of the 
woods with rifles and supplies of ammu- 
nition, and the anti-aircraft guns around 
Chateau-Thierry set up their baying. The 
109th's marksmen tried a few shots, but 
the range was too great for effective 
shooting, and the flyers turned tail and 
disappeared in the face of the air bar- 
rage from the big guns before they got 
within good rifle range of our men. 

Next day the regiments remained in 
camp, and that night another battalion of 
the 109th stood guard on the bridges. This 
time the flyers apparently had crossed 
the river to the east or the west, for they 
came up from the south, directly over 
the bridges at Chierry, probably returning 
from an attempt to raid Paris. 

They rained bombs. There was no pos- 
sible chance for the marksmen this time. 
Rather it was a question of keeping out 
of the way of the death-dealing missiles 
hurtling earthward. Again the anti-air- 



BOMBED FROM THE AIR 111 

craft guns gave tongue, and after ten 
minutes or so of this explosive outburst 
the airplanes disappeared. Then the 109th 
learned something of the difficulties airmen 
experience in trying to hit a particular 
mark. Although the river had been 
churned to foam by the hail of bombs, 
only one bridge was hit and the damage to 
it was so slight as to be repaired easily. 

Early next morning, July 26th, the period 
of inaction came to an end. The regi- 
ments were ordered out on a route to the 
northeast, which would carry them some- 
what east of Fere-en-Tardenois, in the mid- 
dle of the Soissons-Rheims "pocket," which 
fell some days later. 

Orders were for the Pennsylvanians to 
press along that route with all speed until 
they effected contact with the retreating 
enemy, and to exert all possible pressure 
to harass him and push him as far and as 
rapidly as possible. 

Gradually, as the regiments moved for- 
ward, the soimd of the firing became 
louder, and they realized they were over- 
taking the ebbing tide of Germans. Officers, 
having learned by bitter experience at the 
Marne the value of the British suggestion 



112 THE IRON DIVISION 

to do away in battle with marks distin- 
guishing them as of commissioned rank, 
stripped their uniforms of insignia and 
camouflaged themselves to look like enlisted 
men. The officer casualties in those first 
few days of fighting could not be maintained 
without working irreparable harm to the 
organizations. 

Orders were issued to beware of every 
spot that might shelter a sniper or a 
machine gun. The regiments deployed into 
lines of skirmishers, greatly extending the 
front covered and reducing the casualties 
from shell fire. Patrols were out in advance, 
and every precaution was taken against 
surprise by parties of Germans that might 
have been left behind in the retreat. 

The Germans still were using gas shells, 
and again the masks were inspected care- 
fully and donned. Overhead, enemy air- 
craft circled, but Allied airman and anti- 
aircraft guns were active enough to keep 
them at a respectful distance. They were 
unable to harry the Americans w ith machine 
gun fire. Occasionally, a bombing flyer, 
protected by a covey of fighters, would get 
into what he believed to be a favorable 
position for unloosing a bomb, but these 



BOMBED FROM THE AIR 113 

did no damage to the thin lines of our 
troops. 

At night they made their way into 
the forests and lay there. There was 
little sleeping, but the men were grate- 
ful for the rest. They evaded the vigilance 
of the airplane observers, so they were not 
molested by a concentrated artillery fire, 
against which the forest would have been 
poor shelter, but the continual roar of the 
artillery and the occasional shell that came 
with a rending crash into the woods effec- 
tually disposed of any chance to sleep. 
The men crept close to the trunks of the 
larger trees. Some dug themselves little 
shelters close to the trees, but the night 
was a terrible one, and the day, when it 
came, was almost a relief. 

The regiments now were in a region 
where the Germans had been long enough 
to establish themselves, where they had 
expected to stay, but had been driven out 
sullenly and reluctantly, fighting bitter 
rearguard actions the whole way. Our 
men had their first opportunity to learn 
what it means to a peaceful countryside to 
face a German invasion. 

The wonderful roads for which France 



114 THE IRON DIVISION 

so long had been noted were totally effaced 
in places, sometimes by shell fire, often 
with every evidence of having been mined. 
Here and there were tumbled heaps of 
masonry, representing what had once been 
happy little villages, many of the houses 
centuries old. Trees and grape vines had 
been hacked off close to the ground, and 
often the trunks of trees were split and 
chopped as if in maniacal fury. Where 
the Huns had not had time to chop trees 
down, they had cut rings deep into the 
trunks to kill them. 

They saw the finest homes of the wealth- 
iest landowners and the humblest cottages 
of the peasants absolutely laid in ruins — 
furniture, tapestries, clothing, all scattered 
broadcast. Handsome rugs were tramped 
into the mud of the fields and roads. 
It was as if a titanic hurricane had swept 
the entire country. 

There had been no time to bury the 
dead, and the men actually suffered, men- 
tally and physically, from the sights and 
the stench. At one place they came on a 
machine gun emplacement, with dead Boche 
lying about in heaps. Close beside one of 
the guns, almost in a sitting posture, with 



BOMBED FROM THE AIR 115 

one arm thrown over the weapon as if with 
pride of possession, was an American lad, 
his fine, clean-cut face fixed by death in a 
glorified smile of triumph. 

Scores of officers and men almost uncon- 
sciously clicked their hands up to the 
salute in silent tribute to this fair-haired 
young gladiator who had not lived to enjoy 
his well- won laurels. 

It was about this time that the Penn- 
sylvanians saw one of the few really 
picturesque sights in modern warfare — a 
touch of the war of olden times, which 
had been seen seldom since Germany went 
mad in 1914. Troop after troop of cavalry, 
some French, some American, passed them, 
the gallant horsemen sitting their steeds 
with conscious pride, their jingling accoutre- 
ments playing an accompaniment to their 
sharp canter, and round after round of 
cheers from the Americans sped them on 
their way to harry the retreating foe. 

During a brief halt along a road for 
rest a part of the 110th Infantry took 
shelter under an overhanging bank while 
a sudden spurt of heavy enemy fire drenched 
the vicinity. There were few casualties 
and the officers were just beginning to 



116 THE IRON DIVISION 

congratulate themselves on having chosen a 
fortunate position for their rest when a 
large high-explosive shell landed on the 
edge of the bank directly above Company A. 
Two men were killed outright and several 
were wounded. Lieutenant George W. R. 
Martin, of Narberth, rushed to the wounded 
to apply first-aid treatment. 

The first man he reached was Private 
AUanson R. Day, Jr., nineteen years old, 
of Monongahela City, Pa., whom the men 
called ''Deacon," because of a mildness of 
manner and a religious turn of mind. 

"Well, Deacon, are you hard hit.^^" 
asked Lieutenant Martin, as he prepared 
his first-aid application. 

"There's Paul Marshall, Lieutenant; he's 
hit worse than I am. Dress him first, 
please, sir. I can wait," replied the Deacon, 
who died later of his wounds. 

The Pennsylvanians had thought they 
hated the Hun when they left America. 
They had learned more of him and his 
ways below the Marne, and they found 
their loudly-voiced threats and objurga- 
tions turning to a steely, silent, implac- 
able wrath that was ten times more ter- 
rible and more ominous for the enemy. 



BOMBED FROM THE AIR 117 

The farther they penetrated in the wake 
of the Boche the more deep-seated and 
lasting became this feehng of utter detes- 
tation. Not for worlds would they have 
turned back then. Had word come that 
peace was declared it is doubtful if the 
officers could have held them back. The 
iron had entered their souls. 

During the progress of all these events 
east of Chateau-Thierry, the 112th Infantry 
had come up and had been in the desperate 
fighting in the vicinity of that town, so 
that when the Franco-American attack 
from Soissons to Bussiares, on the western 
side of the pocket, began to compel a 
German retirement from the Marne, that 
regiment was right on their heels. 

The 110th and the 111th were close 
behind and all three soon came into eon- 
tact with the fleeing enemy. 

In all their engagements the greatest 
difficulty the officers had to contend with 
was the eagerness of the men to come to 
grips with the enemy. Repeatedly they 
overran their immediate objectives and 
several times walked into their own barrage 
so determinedly that officers, unable to halt 
the troops so hungry for revenge, had to 



118 THE IRON nDIVISION 

call off the barrage to save them from being 
destroyed by our own guns. 

The Pennsylvanians pressed on relent- 
lessly. The 109th Infantry now was rush- 
ing up from the Marne to resume its 
meteorlike career as a fighting unit beside 
its fellow regiments of the old National 
Guard, and word was received that the 
53d Field Artillery Brigade, commanded by 
Brigadier-General W. G. Price, Jr., of 
Chester, was hurrying up to participate in 
its first action. 

Still other organizations of the Twenty- 
eighth Division hastening to the front were 
the ammunition train and the supply 
train. The division was being reassem- 
bled, for the first time after leaving Camp 
Hancock, as rapidly as the exigencies of. 
hard campaigning would permit. 

With the 112th and 111th in the van, 
the Pennsylvanians pushed northeastward 
after the Germans. It was at times when 
the Huns had stopped, apparently deter- 
mined to make a stand at last, only to be 
blasted out of their holding positions by the 
Americans and continue their flight that, 
as so many officers wrote home, they 
"could not run fast enough to keep up with 



BOMBED FROM THE AIR 119 

Fritz," and the artillery was outdistanced 
hopelessly. 

Repeatedly our doughboys had to be 
held up in their headlong rush to permit 
the artillery to catch up. It being useless 
to waste life by sending infantry against 
the formidable German positions without 
artillery support, our lines were held back 
until the struggling field guns could come 
up to silence the German guns by expert 
counter battery work. 

The Pennsylvanians were wild with eager- 
ness and excitement. None but the officers 
had access to maps, and hundreds of the 
men, having only hazy ideas as to the 
geography of France or the distances they 
had traveled, believed they were pushing 
straight for Germany and had not far to go. 

One and all realized fully that, when 
they began their fighting, the Germans for 
months had been moving forward triumph- 
antly. They realized just as well that the 
Germans now were in flight before them. 
Each man felt that to his particular com- 
pany belonged the glory of that reversal of 
conditions. Thus, scores wrote home: 
"Our company was all that stood between 
the Boche and Paris, and we licked him and 



no THE IRON DIVISION 

have him on the run" — or words to that 
effect. 

They were Kke a set of rabbit hounds, 
almost whining in their anxiety to get 
at the foe. Deluged by high explosives, 
shrapnel and gas shells, seeing their com- 
rades mowed down by machine gun fire, 
bombed from the sky, alternately in pouring 
rain and burning sun, hungry half the time, 
their eyes burning from want of sleep, half 
suffocated from long intervals in gas masks, 
undergoing all the hardships of a bitter 
campaign against a determined, vigorous 
and unscrupulous enemy, yet their only 
thought was to push on — ^and on — and on. 

The likeness to rabbit hounds is not un- 
complimentary or far-fetched. One soldier 
wrote home: *'We have had the Boche 
on the run in open country, and it has been 
like shooting rabbits — and I am regarded as 
a good shot in the army." 



CHAPTER VIII 

In Heroic Mold 

CAPTAIN W. R. DUNLAP, of Pitts- 
burgh, commander of Company E, 
111th Infantry, and Captain Lucius 
M. Phelps, Oil City, of Company G, 112th 
Infantry, with their troops, led the advance 
beyond Epieds. 

They came to the western edge of the 
forest of Fere, and into that magnificent 
wooded tract the Germans fled. The occa- 
sional small woods, dotting open country, 
through which they had been fighting, now 
gave way to heavily timbered land, with 
here and there an open spot of varying 
extent. 

An American brigadier-general, who has 
the reputation of being something of a 
Haroun-al-Raschid among the men, left 
his dugout in the rear at night and went 
forward to the front lines to get personal 
knowledge of the dangers his men were 
facing. Scouts having reported that the 
Germans were preparing to launch an 

(121) 



122 THE IRON DIVISION 

attack in hope of delaying our troops, the 
general started for a position from which 
he would be able to see the attack and watch 
our men meet it. He became confused in 
the forest and arrived at the designated 
observation post later than he had intended. 
He found it had been destroyed by a shell 
just a few moments before he reached it. 
Had he been on time he certainly would 
have lost his life. 

He took up another position and Lieu- 
tenant William Robinson, Uniontown, Pa., 
started to lead forward the first line of 
Americans to break up the German forma- 
tions. Standing on a little ridge, the 
general saw the young officer, whom he 
had known for years, going among his 
men, cheering and encouraging them, when 
a huge shell burst almost at the lieutenant's 
feet. A party of his men rushed to the 
spot, but there was not even a trace of the 
officer. 

"I'll sleep alone on this spot with my 
thoughts tonight," said the saddened gen- 
eral, and he did, spending the night in a 
shell hole. 

The Americans battled their way in little 
groups into the edge of the forest, like 



IN HEROIC MOLD 123 

bushmen. This was the situation when 
night fell, with a fringe of Americans in 
hiding along the southern edge of the 
woods. The forest seemed to present an 
almost impenetrable barrier, through which 
it was utterly hopeless to continue an 
effort to advance in the darkness. 

So scattered were the groups that had 
forced their way into the shelter of the 
wood that it was imperative headquarters 
should know their approximate positions 
in order to dispose the forces for a renewal 
of the assault in the morning. In this 
emergency Lieutenant William Allen, Jr., 
Pittsburgh, of Company B, 111th Infantry, 
volunteered to find the advanced detach- 
ments of our men. 

Throughout the night he threaded his 
way through the woods, not knowing what 
instant he would stumble on Germans or 
be fired on or thrust through by his own 
men. It was a hair-raising, dare-devil feat 
of such a nature that he w^on the unstinted 
admiration of the men and the warm praise 
of his superiors. When he found himself 
near other men he remained silent until a 
muttered word or even such inconsequent 
things as the tinkle of a distinctly American 



lU THE IRON DIVISION 

piece of equipment or the smell of American 
tobacco — entirely different from that in the 
European armies — ^let him know his neigh- 
bors were friends. Then a soft call "in 
good United States" established his own 
identity and made it safe for him to 
approach. 

As the first streamers of dawn were 
appearing in the sky off in the direction of 
Hunland, he crawled back to the main 
American lines, and the report he made 
enabled his superiors to plan their attack, 
which worked with clock-like precision and 
pushed the Boche on through the woods. 

Corporal Alfred W. Davis, Uniontown, 
Pa., of Company D, 110th Infantry, was 
moving forward through the woods in this 
fighting, close to a lieutenant of his com- 
pany, when a bullet from a sniper hidden 
in a tree struck the corporal's gun, was 
deflected and pierced the lieutenant's brain, 
killing him instantly. Crawling up a 
ravine like an Indian stalking game, Davis 
set off with blood in his eye in quest of 
revenge. 

When he picked off his eighteenth Ger- 
man in succession it was nearly dark, 
so he "called it a day," as he remarked, and 



IN HEROIC MOLD 125 

slept better that night for thought of the 
toll he had taken from the Germans to 
avenge his officer. 

In the woods the Germans fought des- 
perately, despite that they were dazed by 
the terrific artillery fire. Hidden in tree 
tops and under rocks, with even their 
steel helmets camouflaged in red, green 
and yellow, it was difficult for the attackers 
to pick them out in the flicker of the 
shadows on the dense foliage. 

While the attacking waves were advanc- 
ing it was discovered that touch had been 
lost with the forces on the right flank of the 
110th, and Sergeant Blake Lightner, Al- 
toona. Pa., a liaison scout from Company 
G, 110th, started out alone to re-establish 
the connection. 

He ran into an enemy machine gun nest, 
killed the crew and captured the guns single- 
handed. Then he went back, brought up 
a machine gun crew, established a snipers' 
post, re-established the communications, 
returned to his own command and gave 
the co-ordinates for laying down a barrage 
on a line of enemy machine gun nests he had 
discovered. 

Toward nightfall of one of these days of 



126 THE IRON DIVISION 

desperate fighting it was discovered that 
the ammunition supply of the first battahon 
of the 110th was running low, and Corporal 
Harold F. Wickerham, Washington, Pa., 
and Private Boynton David Marchand, 
Monongahela City, Pa., were sent back 
with a message for brigade headquarters. 
When they reached the spot where the 
headquarters had been they found it had 
been moved. They walked for miles 
through the woods in the darkness and 
finally came to a town where another 
regiment was stationed, and they sent 
their message over the military telephone. 

They w^ere invited to remain the rest of 
the night and sleep; fearing the message 
might not get through properly, however, 
and knowing the grave need of more ammu- 
nition, they set out again, and toward 
morning reached their own ammunition 
dump and confirmed the message orally. 
Again they refused a chance to rest, and 
set out to rejoin their command, which 
they reached just in time to take part in a 
battle in the afternoon. Such are the 
characteristics of the American soldier. 

Somewhat the same fate as befell Epieds, 
which had been completely leveled by 



IN HEROIC MOLD 127 

artillery fire, canie to the village of Le 
Channel. After violent fighting lasting 
two hours, during which the village changed 
hands twice, it was blown to pieces by the 
artillery, and our men took possession, 
driving the Germans on northeastward. 

The Pennsylvanians now began to feel 
the change in the German resistance as 
the Boche retreat reached its second line 
of defense, based on the Ourcq River, and 
the fighting became hourly more bitter and 
determined. This, as well as the dense 
forests, where the Germans had strung a 
maze of barbed wire from tree to tree, 
slowed up the retreat and pursuit. Also 
the density of the woods hampered obser- 
vation of the enemy from the air and there- 
fore slowed up our artillery fire. 

The process of taking enemy positions by 
frontal assault, always a costly operation, 
gave way, wherever possible, to infiltra- 
tion, by which villages and other posts 
were pinched off, exactly as Cambrai, St. 
Quentin, Lille and other places were 
taken later by the British farther north. 

The process of infiltration from a mili- 
tary standpoint means exactly the same 
thing as the word means in any other 



128 THE IRON DIVISION 

connection. A few men at a time filter 
into protected positions close to the enemy 
until enough have assembled to offer battle, 
the enemy meanwhile being kept down by 
strong, concentrated fire from the main 
body and the artillery. Although much 
slower than an assault, this is extremely 
economical of men. 

During this progress from the Marne 
northward, the various headquarters had 
found some difficulty in keeping in touch 
with the advancing columns. A head- 
quarters, even of a regiment, is not so 
mobile as the regiment itself. There is a 
vast amount of paraphernalia and supplies 
to be moved, yet it is necessary that a 
reasonably close touch be maintained with 
the fighting front. 

The German method of retreat neces- 
sarily resulted in the Americans' going 
forward by leaps and bounds. Strong 
points, such as well-organized villages, 
manned by snipers and machine guns in 
some force, held the troops up until the Ger- 
man rear-guards were disposed of. Once 
they were cleaned up, however, the Ameri- 
can advance, hampered only by hidden 
sharpshooters and machine guns in small 



IN HEROIC MOLD 129 

strength, moved forward rapidly. It was 
reported, for instance, that one regimental 
headquarters was moved three times in 
one day to keep up with the lines. 

Most of the time, regimental, and even 
brigade, headquarters were under artillery 
fire from the German big guns, and it was 
from this cause that the first Pennsylvania 
ofiicer of the rank of lieutenant-colonel 
was killed, July 28th. He was Wallace W. 
Fetzer, of Milton, Pa., second in command 
of the 110th. 

Regimental headquarters had been moved 
far forward and established in a brick 
house in a good state of preservation. The 
ofiice machinery just was getting well into 
the swing again when a high explosive shell 
fell in the front yard and threw a geyser of 
earth over Colonel Kemp, who was at the 
door, and Lieutenant-Colonel Fetzer, who 
was sitting on the steps. 

A moment later a second shell struck 
the building and killed three orderlies. 
This was good enough evidence for Col- 
onel Kemp that his headquarters had been 
spotted by Boche airmen, for the artillery 
was registering too accurately to be done 
by chance, so he ordered a move. 



130 THE IRON DIVISION 

Officers and men of the staff were pack- 
ing up to move and Lieutenant Stewart 
M. Alexander, Altoona, Pa., the regimental 
intelligence officer, was finishing questioning 
two captured Hun captains when a big high- 
explosive shell scored a direct hit on the 
building. Seventeen men in the house, 
including the two German captains, were 
killed outright. Colonel Kemp and Lieu- 
tenant-Colonel Fetzer had left the building 
and were standing side by side in the yard. 
A piece of shell casing struck Colonel 
Fetzer, killing him, and a small piece 
struck Colonel Kemp a blow on the jaw, 
which left him speechless and suffering 
from shell-shock for some time. 

Lieutenant Alexander, face to face with 
the two German officer prisoners, was 
blown clear out of the building into the 
middle of the roadway, but was uninjured, 
except for shock. 

It was this almost uncanny facility of 
artillery fire for taking one man and 
leaving another of two close together, 
that led to the fancy on the part of soldiers 
that it was useless to try to evade the big 
shells, because if "your number" was on 
one it would get you, no matter what you 



IN HEROIC MOLD 131 

did, and if your number was not on it, it 
would pass harmlessly by. Thousands of 
the men became absolute fatalists in this 
regard. 

Major Edward Martin, of Waynesburg, 
Pa., took temporary command of the 
regiment and won high commendation by 
his work in the next few days. 

It now became necessary to straighten 
the American line. The 109th had come 
up and was just behind the 110th. It had 
taken shelter for the night of July 28th in a 
wood just south of Fresne, and early on the 
morning of July 29th received orders to be 
on the south side of the Ourcq, two miles 
away, by noon of that day. 

The men knew they were closely in touch 
with the enemy once more, but this time 
there was none of the nervousness before 
action that had marked their first entrance 
into battle. They had beaten back the 
Prussian Guard, the flower of the Crown 
Prince's army, once, and knew they could 
do it again. 

Furthermore, there were many scores to 
settle. Every man felt he wanted to 
avenge the officers and comrades who had 
fallen in the earlier fighting, and it was a 



132 THE IRON DIVISION 

grimly-determined and relentless body of 
men that emerged from that wood in skir- 
mish formation before dawn of July 29th. 

Almost immediately parts of the line 
came into action, but it was about an 
hour after the beginning of "the day's 
work" that the first serious fighting took 
place. Company M, near the center of 
the 109th's long line, ran into a strong 
machine gun nest. The new men who had 
been brought into the company to fill the 
gaps that were left after the fighting on the 
Marne had been assimilated quickly and 
inoculated with the 109th's fighting spirit 
and desire for revenge. 

Although the company had gone into 
its first action as the only one in the regi- 
ment w ith the full complement of six com- 
missioned officers, it now was sadly short, 
for those bitter days below the Marne 
had worked havoc with the commissioned 
personnel as well as with the enlisted men. 

Officers were becoming scarce all through 
the regiment. Lieutenant Fales was the 
only one of the original officers of the com- 
pany left in service, so Lieutenant Edward 
B. Goward, of Philadelphia, had been 
sent by Colonel Brown from headquarters 



IN HEROIC MOLD 133 

to take command of the company, with 
Lieutenant Fales second in command. 

The company had to advance down a long 
hill, cross a small tributary of the Ourcq, 
which here was near its source, and go up 
another hill — all in the open. The Boche 
were intrenched along the edge of a wood at 
the top of this second hill, and they poured 
in a terrible fire as the company advanced. 

Lieutenants Goward and Tales were lead- 
ing the first platoons. The company was 
wild with eagerness and there was no 
holding them. Here was the first chance 
they had had since the Marne to square 
accounts with the unspeakable Hun, and 
they were in no humor to employ subtle 
tactics or use even ordinary care. 

With queer gurgling sounds behind their 
gas masks — they would have been yells of 
fury without the masks in place — ^they 
swept forward. Lieutenant Goward ran 
straight into a stream of machine gun 
bullets. One struck him in the right 
shoulder and whirled him around. A sec- 
ond struck him in the left shoulder and 
twisted him further. As he crumpled up a 
stream of bullets struck him in the stomach. 
He fell dying. 



134 THE IRON DIVISION 

Seeing him topple. Lieutenant Fales 
rushed toward him to see if he could be of 
service. He walked directly into the same 
fire and was mortally wounded. Goward 
managed to roll into a shell hole, where he 
died in a short time. 

The men did not stop. Led only by their 
non-commissioned officers, they plunged 
straight into and over the machine gun 
nest directly in the face of its murderous 
fire which had torn gaps in their ranks, 
but could not stop them. They stamped 
out the German occupants with as little 
compunction as one steps on a spider. 
The men came out of the woods breathing 
hard and trembling from the reaction 
to their fury and exertions, but they turned 
over no prisoners. 

The machine gun crews were dead to a 
man. 

Goward and Fales had been especially 
popular with the men of the company, 
and their loss was felt keenly. Goward 
was distinctly of the student type, quiet, 
thoughtful, scholarly, doing his own think- 
ing at all times. He had been noted for 
this characteristic when a student at the 
University of Pennsylvania. Fales, on the 



IN HEROIC MOLD 135 

other hand, was of the dashing, athletic 
type, and the two, with their directly 
opposed natures, had worked together per- 
fectly and quite captured the hearts of 
their men. 

Both Goward and Tales are buried on 
the side of a little hill near Courmont, in 
the Commune of Cierges, Department of 
the Aisne, their graves marked by the 
customary wooden crosses, to which are 
attached their identification disks. 

From then on, the rest of the day was a 
continuous, forward-moving battle for the 
regiment. Every mile was contested hotly 
by Hun rear-guard machine gunners, left 
behind to harass the advancing Americans 
and make their pursuit as costly as possible. 

Lieutenant Herbert P. Hunt, of Philadel- 
phia, son of a former heutenant-colonel 
of the old First, leading Company A of the 
109th in a charge, was struck in the left 
shoulder by a piece of shell and still was in 
hospital when the armistice ended hostilities. 

The 109th reached Courmont and found 
it well organized by a small force of Ger- 
mans, with snipers and machine guns in 
what remained of the houses, firing from 
windows and doors and housetops. They 



ir>(i THE lUOX DIMSIOX 

cleaned up the town in a workmanlike 
manner, and only a handful of prisoners 
weut baek to the cages in the ivar. 

It was in this fighting that Sergeant 
John n. AYintlu*op, of Bryn Mawr, per- 
formed the service for which he was cited 
otHeially by General Pershing, winning the 
Distinguished Service Cross. The sergeant 
was killed in action a few weeks later. 

lie was a member of Company G, 109tli 
Infantry. All its oilicers became inca- 
pacitated when the company was in action. 
Sergeant Winthix^p took command. The 
of^cial citation in his case iwid: 

**For extraordinary heroism in action 
near the Hiver Ourcq, northeast of Chateau- 
Thierry, France, July 30, 1918. Sergeant 
Winthrop took command of his company 
when all his othcers were killed or wounded, 
and handled it with extreme courage, cool- 
ness and skill, luider an intense artillery 
bombardment and machine gini fire, during 
an exceptionally difficult attack." 



CHAPTER IX 

The Church of Roncheres 

MEANWHILE, the 110th had been 
having a stirring part of the war 
all its own, in the taking of 
Roncheres. As was the case with every 
other town and village in the whole region, 
the Germans, without expecting or intend- 
ing to hold the town, had taken every 
possible step to make the taking of it as 
costly as possible. With their characteristic 
disregard of every finer instinct, they had 
made the church, fronting an open square in 
the center of the town and commanding 
roads in four directions, the center of their 
resistance. 

Every building, every wall, fence and 
tree, sheltered a machine gun or a sniper. 
Most of the enemy died where they stood. 
As was the case 99 times out of every 100, 
they fired until they dropped from bullets 
or thrust up their hands and bleated 
"Kamerad," like scared sheep, when our 
men got close enough to use the bayonet. 

(137) 



138 THE IRON DIVISION 

Some time before, however, the Penn- 
sylvanians had undertaken to make pris- 
oners of a German thus beseeching mercy, 
and it was only after several men had fallen 
from apparently mysterious fire that they 
discovered the squealing Hun, hands in 
air, had his foot on a lever controlling the 
fire of his machine gun. Thus, he assumed 
an attitude of surrender in order to decoy 
our men within easier range of the gun he 
operated with his foot. 

So it is small wonder that the men of the 
110th went berserk in Roncheres and made 
few prisoners. They played the old-fash- 
ioned game of hide and seek, in which the 
men in khaki were always "it," and to be 
spied meant death for the Hun. From 
building to building they moved steadily 
forward until they came within range of 
the village church, when their progress 
was stayed for some time. 

There was a cross on the roof of the 
church of some kind of stone with a red 
tinge. Behind it the Germans had planted 
guns. Three guns were hidden in the 
belfry, from which the bells had been 
removed and sent to Germany. Gothic 
walls and balconies, from which in happier 



THE CHURCH OF RONCHERES 139 

days the plaster statuettes of saints looked 
down on the fair, green fields and peaceful 
countryside of France, sheltered machine 
gunners, snipers and small cannon. 

Sharpshooters of the 110th finally picked 
off the gunners behind the cross, but the 
little fortress in the belfry still held out. 
Detachments set out to work around the 
outer edge of the town and surround the 
church. When they found houses with 
partition walls so strong that a hole could 
not be battered through easily, sharp- 
shooters were stationed at the windows 
and doors and they were able to hold the 
German fire down so well that other men 
could slip to the shelter of the next house. 

This was all right until they came to the 
roads that radiated from the church to the 
four corners of the village. They were not 
wide roads, but the terrific fire that swept 
down them at every sign of a movement 
by the Americans made the prospect of 
crossing them seem like a first class suicide. 
Nevertheless, it had to be done. The men 
who led this circuitous advance waited 
until enough of their comrades had arrived 
to make a sortie in force. The best rifle- 
men were told off to remain behind in the 



140 THE IRON DIVISION 

houses and to mark down the peepholes 
and other places from which the fire was 
coming. Automatic riflemen and rifle 
grenadiers were assigned to look after 
the Huns secreted in the church. 

When these arrangements were com- 
pleted, the Americans began a fire that 
reduced the German effort to a minimum. 
Our marksmen did not wait for a German 
to show himself. They kept a steady 
stream of lead and steel pouring into every 
place from which German shots had been 
seen to come. 

Under tover of this sweeping hail, the 
men who were to continue the advance 
darted across the road, right in the open. 
They made no effort to fire, but put every 
ounce of energy into the speed of their 
legs. Thus a footing was established by a 
considerable group on the other side of the 
road, and the remaining houses between 
there and the church soon were cleaned up, 
so that reinforcements could move forward. 

Still the church remained the dominating 
figure of the fight, as it had been of the 
village landscape so many years. Its stout 
stone walls, built to last for centuries, 
offered ideal shelter, and before anything 



THE CHURCH OF RONCHERES 141 

further could be done it became imperative 
to wipe out that nest of snarHng Hun fire. 

Using the same tactics as had availed 
them so well in the crossing of the road, 
a little band of Americans was enabled to 
cross the small open space at the rear of 
the church. Here a shell from a German 
battery had conveniently opened a hole 
in the solid masonry. It was the work 
of only a few minutes to enlarge this, and 
our men began to filter into the once sacred 
edifice, now so profaned by the sacrilegious 
Hun. 

The bottom of the church was turned 
quickly into a charnel house for the Boche 
there, and then our men were free to turn 
their attention to that annoying steeple, 
which still was taking its toll. One man 
led the way up the winding stone stairs, 
fighting every step. Strange to relate, he 
went safely to the top, although comrades 
behind him were struck down, and he faced 
a torrent of fire and even missiles hurled 
down by the frantic Huns who sought to 
stay this implacable advance. 

Eventually the top of the stairs was 
gained. A German under officer, who 
evidently had been in command of the 



142 THE IRON DIVISION 

stronghold, leaped over the low parapet 
to death, and three Huns, the last of the 
garrison, abjectly waved their arms in the 
air and squalled the customary *'Kamerad! 
Kamerad!" 

Mopping up of the rest of the town was 
an easy task by comparison with what 
had gone before. Then, with only a brief 
breathing spell, the regiment swung a little 
to the northwest and reached Courmont in 
time to join the 109th in wiping out the 
last machine gunners there. 

Now came an achievement of which 
survivors of the 109th and 110th Infantry 
Regiments — the Fifty-fifth Infantry Bri- 
gade — will retain the memory for years to 
come. It was one of those feats that become 
regimental traditions, the tales of which are 
handed down for generations within regi- 
mental organizations and in later years 
become established as standards toward 
which future members of the organization 
may aspire with only small likelihood of 
attaining. 

This achievement was the taking of the 
Bois de Grimpettes, or Grimpettes Wood. 

The operation, in the opinion of officers 
outside the Fifty-fifth Brigade, compared 



THE CHURCH OF RONCHERES 143 

most favorably with the never-to-be-for- 
gotten exploit of the marines in the Bois 
de Belleau. 

There were these differences: First, the 
Belleau Wood fight occurred at a time 
when all the rest of the western front 
was more or less inactive, but the taking 
of Grimpettes Wood came in the midst of 
a general forward movement that was 
electrifying the world, a movement in 
which miles of other front bulked large 
in public attention; second, the taking of 
Belleau was one of the very first real bat- 
tle operations of Americans, and the ma- 
rines were watched by the critical eyes of 
a warring world to see how "those Amer- 
icans" would compare with the seasoned 
soldiery of Europe; third, the Belleau fight 
was an outstanding operation, both by 
reason of the vital necessity of taking the 
wood in order to clear the way for what 
was to follow and because it was not 
directly connected with or part of other 
operations anywhere else. 

Grimpettes Wood was the Fifty-fiifth 
Infantry Brigade's own "show." The 
wood lies north of Courmont and just south 
of Sergy. It is across the Ourcq, which 



144 THE IRON DIVISION 

is so narrow that sonio of the companies 
laid litters from bank to bank and walked 
over dryshod. and so shallow that those 
who waded across hardly went in over 
their shoetops. At one side tlie wood runs 
over a little hill. The 109th and 110th 
were told, in etfect: — 

*'The Germans have a strong position in 
Grimpettes Wood. Take it/' 

The regiments were beginning to know 
something about German ** strong posi- 
tions." In fact they had passed the 
amateur stage in dealing with such prob- 
lems. Although, perhaps they could not 
be assigned yet to the expert class, never- 
theless they were supplied with groups of 
junior officers and '*noncoms" who felt — 
and justly — ^that they knew something 
about cleaning up '* strong positions." They 
no longer went about such a task with the 
jaunty sajig froid and reckless daredeviltry 
that had marked their earHer experiences. 
They had learned that it did themselves 
and their men no good and was of no 
ser\'ice to America, to advance deiiantly in 
the open in splendid but foolish disregard 
of hidden machine guns and every other 
form of Hun strafing. 



THE CHURCH OF KONCHERES 145 

Yet when it came to the taking of Grim- 
pettes Wood, they had no alternative to 
jast that tiling. The Germans then were 
making their last stand on the line of the 
Ourcq. Already they had detenrjined on, 
and had begun, the further retreat to the 
line of the Vesle, at this point alxmt ten 
miles farther north. Such places as Grim- 
pet tes Wood had been manned in force to 
hold up tPie Franco- American advance as 
long as possible. Wlien they were torn 
loose, the Huns again would be in full 
flight northeastward. 

Grimpettes was organized as other small 
woods had been by the Germans during 
the fighting of the summer: the trees were 
loaded ^nth machine guns, weapons and 
gunners chained to their places; the under- 
brush was laced through with barbed wire; 
concealed strong points checker-boarded 
the dense, second gro^lh woodland, so 
that when the Pennsylvanians took one 
nest of machine guns they found them- 
selves fired on from two or more others. 
This maze of machine guns and snipers was 
supplemented by countless trench mortars 
and one-pounder cannon. 

The taking of the hilly end of the wood 



146 THE IRON DIVISION 

was assigned to the 110th, and the 109th 
was to clean out the lower part. 

It was a murderous undertaking. The 
nearest edge of the wood was 700 yards 
from the farthest extension of the village 
of Courmont that offered even a shadow of 
protection. 

The regiments swung out from the shel- 
ter of the village in the most approved 
wave formation, faultlessly executed. The 
moment the first men emerged from the 
protection of the buildings, they ran into 
a hail of lead and steel that seemed, some 
of the men said later, almost like a solid 
wall in places. There was not a leaf to 
protect them. Hundreds of machine guns 
tore loose in the woods, until their rattle 
blended into one solid roar. One-pounder 
cannon sniped at them. German airmen, 
who had complete control of the air in that 
vicinity, flew the length of the advancing 
lines, as low as 100 feet from the ground, 
raking them with machine gun fire and 
dropping bombs. The Pennsylvanians or- 
ganized their own air defense. They 
simply used their rifles with more or less 
deterrent effect on the flyers. 

The sniping one-pounders were the worst 



THE CHURCH OF RONCHERES 147 

of all, the men said afterward — ^those, and 
the air bombs. They messed one up so 
badly when they scored a hit. 

It is a mystery how any man lived 
through that welter of fire. Even the 
men who survived could not explain their 
good fortune. That the regiments were 
not wiped out was a demonstration ot the 
tremendous expenditure of ammunition in 
warfare compared to effectiveness of fire, 
for thousands of bullets and shells were 
fired in that engagement for every man 
who was hit. 

A pitiful few of the men in the leading 
wave won through to the edge of the wood 
and immediately flung themselves down 
and dug in. A few of the others who were 
nearer the wood than the town scraped out 
little hollows for themselves and stuck 
grimly where they were when the attackers 
were recalled, the officers realizing the 
losses were beyond reason for the value of 
the objective. 

Neither officers nor men were satisfied. 
Private soldiers pleaded with their sergeants 
for another chance, and the sergeants in 
turn besought their officers. The Penn- 
sylvanians had been assigned to a task and 



148 THE IRON DIVISION 

liad not performed it. That was not the 
Pennsylvania way. Furthermore there were 
living and unwounded comrades out there 
who could not be left long unsupported. 

A breathing spell was allowed, and then 
word went down the lines to "have another 
go at it." The men drew their belts 
tighter, set their teeth grimly and plunged 
out into the storm of lead and steel once 
more. It must be remembered that aU 
this was without adequate artillery support, 
for what guns had reached the line were 
busy elsewhere, and the others were strug- 
gling up over ruined roads. 

Again on this second attack, a handful 
of men reached the wood and filtered in, 
but the attacking force was driven back. 
It began to seem as if nothing could with- 
stand that torrential fire in force. Three 
times more, making five attacks in all, 
the brigade "went to it" with undimmed 
spirits, and three times more it was forced 
back to the comparative shelter of Cour- 
mont. 

Then headquarters was informed, July 
30th, that artillery had come up and a 
barrage would be put on the wood. 

"Fine!" said the commander. "We will 



THE CHURCH OF RONCHERES 149 

clean that place up at 2.30 o'clock this 
afternoon." 

And that is exactly what they did. The 
guns laid down a barrage that not only 
drove the Germans into their shelters, but 
opened up holes in the near side of the 
wood and through the wire. The scattered 
few of the Pennsylvanians who still clung 
to their places just within the first fringe 
of woodland made themselves as small as 
possible, hugging the ground and the boles 
of the largest trees they could find. De- 
spite their best endeavors, however, it was 
a terrible experience to have to undergo 
that terrific cannonading from their own 
guns. 

Finally, the barrage lifted and the regi- 
ments went out once more for the sixth 
assault on the Bois de Grimpettes. The 
big guns had lent just the necessary added 
weight to carry them across. The Germans 
flung themselves from their dugouts and 
offered what resistance they could, but the 
first wave of thoroughly mad, yelling, 
excited Americans was on them before 
they got well started with their machine 
gun reception. 

Our men went through Grimpettes Wood 



150 THE IRON DIVISION 

*'like a knife through butter" as one officer 
expressed it later. It was man against 
man, rifle and bayonet against machine 
gun and one-pounder, and the best men 
won. Some prisoners were sent back, but 
the burial squads laid away more than 
400 German bodies in Grimpettes. The 
American loss in cleaning up the wood was 
hardly a tithe of that. It was a heroic 
and gallant bit of work, typical of the dash 
and spirit of our men. 

After the first attack on Grimpettes 
Wood had failed, First Sergeant William 
G. Meighan, of Waynesburg, Pa., Com- 
pany K, 110th Infantry, in the lead of his 
company, was left behind when the recall 
was sounded. He had flung himself into 
a shell-hole, in the bottom of which water 
had collected. The machine gun fire of 
the Germans was low enough to *'cut the 
daisies," as the men remarked. Therefore, 
there was no possibility of crawling back 
to the lines. The water in the hole in 
which he had sought shelter attracted all 
the gas in the vicinity, for Fritz was mixing 
gas shells with his shrapnel and high 
explosives. 

The German machine gunners had seen 



THE CHURCH OF RONCHERES 151 

the few Americans who remained on the 
field, hiding in shell holes, and they kept 
their machine guns spraying over those 
nests. Other men had to don their gas 
masks when the gas shells came over, but 
none had to undergo what Sergeant 
Meighan did. 

It is impossible to talk intelligibly or 
to smoke inside a gas mask. A stiff 
clamp is fixed over the nose and every 
breath must be taken through the mouth* 
Soldiers adjust their masks only when 
certain that gas is about. They dread gas 
more than anything else the German has 
to offer, more than any other single thing in 
the whole category of horrors with which the 
Kaiser distinguished this war from all 
other wars in the world's history. Yet the 
discomfort of the gas mask, improved as the 
present model is over the device that first 
intervened between England's doughty men 
and a terrible death is such that it is donned 
only in dire necessity. Soldiers hate the 
gas mask intolerably, but they hate gas 
even more. 

So Sergeant Meighan, hearing the pecu- 
liar sound by which soldiers identify a gas 
shell from all others, slipped on his mask. 



152 THE IRON DIVISION 

It never is easy to adjust, and he got a 
taste of the poison before his mask was 
secure — ^just enough to make him feel 
rather faint and ill. He knew that if his 
mask slipped to one side, if only enough to 
give him one breath of the outer air, he 
would suffer torture, probably die. He 
knew that if he wriggled out of his hole in 
the ground, however inconspicuous he made 
himself, he would be cut to ribbons by 
machine gun bullets. So he simply dug a 
little deeper and waited. 

If this seems like a trifling thing, just 
try one of the gas respirators in use in 
the army. If one is not available, try hold- 
ing your nose and breathing only through 
your mouth. When you have discovered 
how unpleasant this can be, try to imagine 
every breath through the mouth is impreg- 
nated with the chemicals that neutralize 
the gas, thus adding to the difficulty of 
breathing, yet insuring a continuance of 
life. 

And remember that Sergeant Meighan 
did that for fifteen hours. And then ask 
yourself if "hero" is an abused word when 
applied to a man like that. 

Furthermore, when in a later attack on 



THE CHURCH OF RONCHERES 153 

the wood, Company K reached the point 
where Sergeant Meighan was concealed, he 
discovered in a flash that the last officer of 
the first wave had fallen before his shelter 
was reached. Being next in rank, he 
promptly signaled to the men that he 
would assume command, and led them in a 
gallant assault on the enemy position. 

There were other men in the 109th and 
110th regiments who displayed a marked 
spirit of gallantry and sacrifice, which by 
no means was confined to enlisted men. 
Lieutenant Richard Stockton Bullitt, of 
Torresdale, an officer of Company K, 110th, 
was struck in the thigh by a machine gun 
bullet in one of the first attacks. 

He was unable to walk, but saw, about 
a hundred yards away, an automatic rifle, 
which was out of commission because the 
corporal in charge of the rifle squad had 
been killed and the other men could not 
operate the gun. Lieutenant Bullitt, mem- 
ber of an old and distinguished Philadelphia 
family, crawled to the rifle, dragging his 
wounded leg. He took command and 
continued firing the rifle. 

Five more bullets struck him in different 
places in a short time, but he shook his 



154 THE IRON DIVISION 

head defiantly, waved away stretcher 
bearers who wanted to take him to the 
rear, and pumped the gun steadily. Finally 
another bullet struck him squarely in the 
forehead and killed him. 

After the wood was completely in our 
hands, a little column was observed moving 
slowly across the open space toward Cour- 
mont. When it got close enough it was 
seen to consist entirely of unarmed Ger- 
mans, apparently. Staff ofiicers were just 
beginning to fume and fuss about the 
ridiculousness of sending a party of prisoners 
back unguarded, when they discovered a 
very dusty and very disheveled American 
ofiicer bringing up the rear with a rifle held 
at the ''ready." He was Lieutenant Mar- 
shall S. Barron, Latrobe, Pa., of Company 
M, 1 10th. There were sixty-seven prisoners 
in his convoy, and most of them he had 
taken personally. 

That night the regimental headquarters 
of the 110th was moved to Courmont, only 
700 yards behind the wood that had been 
so desperately fought for. 

"We'll work out tomorrow's plans," said 
Major Martin, and summoned his staff 
officers about him. They were bending 



THE CHURCH OF RONCHERES 155 

over a big table, studying the maps, 
when a six-inch shell struck the head- 
quarters building squarely. Twenty-two 
enlisted men and several officers were 
injured. Major Martin, Captain John D. 
Hitchman, Mt. Pleasant, Pa., the regi- 
mental adjutant; Lieutenant Alexander, 
the intelligence officer, and Lieutenant 
Albert G. Braden, of Washington, Pa., were 
knocked about somewhat, but not injured. 

For the second time within a few days. 
Lieutenant Alexander flirted with death. 
The first time he was blown through an 
open doorway into the road by the explosion 
of a shell that killed two German officers, 
who were facing him, men he was examining. 

This time, when the headquarters at 
Courmont was blown up, he was examining 
a German captain and a sergeant, the other 
officers making use of the answers of the 
prisoners in studying the maps and trying 
to determine the disposition of the enemy 
forces. Almost exactly the same thing 
happened again to Lieutenant Alexander. 
Both prisoners were killed, and he was 
blown out of the building uninjured. 

"Getting to be a habit with you," said 
Major Martin. 



156 THE IRON DIVISION 

"This is the life," said Lieutenant Alex- 
ander. 

"Fritz hasn't got a shell with Lieutenant 
Alexander's number on it," said the men in 
the ranks. 

The shell that demolished the regimental 
headquarters was only one of thousands 
with which the Boche raked our lines and 
back areas. As soon as American occu- 
pancy of Bois de Grimpettes had been 
established definitely the Hun turned loose 
an artillery "hate" that made life mis- 
erable for the Pennsylvanians. In the 
110th alone there were twenty-two deaths 
and a total of 102 casualties. 



CHAPTER X 

At Grips With Death 

THE village of Sergy, just north of 
Grimpettes Wood, threatened to be 
a hard nut to crack. The 109th 
Infantry was sent away to the west to 
flank the town from that direction, and 
the 110th co-operated with regiments of 
other divisions in the direct assault. 

The utter razing of Epieds and other 
tov/ns above the Marne by artillery fire, 
in order to blast the Germans out of their 
strongholds, led to a decision to avoid such 
destructive methods wherever possible, and 
the taking of Sergy was almost entirely an 
infantry and machine gun battle. 

It was marked, as so many other of the 
Pennsylvanians' fights were, by the "never- 
say-die" spirit that refused to know defeat. 
There was something unconquerable about 
the terrible persistence of the Americans 
that seemed to daunt the Germans. 

The American forces swept into the 
town and drove the enemy slowly and 

(157) 



158 THE IRON DIVISION 

reluctantly out to the north. The usual 
groups of Huns were still in hiding in 
cellars and dugouts and other strong 
points, where they were able to keep up 
a sniping fire on our men. 

Before the positions could be mopped 
up and organized, the Germans were 
strengthened by fresh forces, and they 
reorganized and took the town again. Four 
times this contest of attack and counter- 
attack was carried out before our men 
established themselves in sufficient force 
to hold the place. Repeatedly the Germans 
strove to obtain a foothold again, but their 
hold on Sergy was gone forever. They 
realized this at last, and then turned loose 
the customary sullen shelling with shrapnel, 
high explosives and gas. 

While the 110th was engaged in this 
grim work, the 109th recrossed the Ourcq, 
marched away down the south bank to 
the west of Sergy, and crossed the river 
again. Officers, feeling almost at the end 
of their physical resources, marvelled at 
the way in which the regiment — ^blooded, 
steady and dependable — swung along on 
this march. 

Like all the other Pennsylvania regi- 



AT GRIPS WITH DEATH 159 

merits, food had been scarce with them 
because of the pace at which they had 
been going and the utter inabihty of the 
commissary to supply them regularly in 
the circumstances. When opportunity of- 
fered, they got a substantial meal, but 
these were few and far between. There 
were innumerable instances of men going 
forty-eight hours without either food or 
water. The thirst was worse than the 
hunger, and the longing for sleep was 
almost overpowering. 

Despite all this, the two regiments set 
off for the conquest of Sergy with undi- 
minished spirit and determination, and 
the two grades of men, commissioned and 
enlisted, neither willing to give up in the 
face of the other's dogged pertinacity, 
spurred each other on to prodigies of will- 
power, for by this time it was will-power, 
more than actual physical endurance, that 
carried them on. 

The 109th took position in a wood just 
northwest of Sergy and sent scouts for- 
ward to ascertain the situation of the 
enemy, only to have them come back with 
word that the town already was in the 
hands of the 110th, after a brilliant action. 



160 THE IRON DIVISION 

The 109th now came to some of the 
most nerve-trying hours it had yet experi- 
enced, though no fighting was involved. 
A wood north of Sergy was selected as an 
abiding place for the night and, watching 
for a chance when Boche flyers were busy 
elsewhere, the regiment made its way into 
the shelter and prepared to get a night's 
rest. 

They had escaped the eyes of the enemy 
airmen but, unknown to the ofiicers of the 
109th, the wood lay close to an enemy 
ammunition dump, which the retiring Huns 
had not had time to destroy. Naturally, 
the German artillery knew perfectly the 
location of the dump, and sought to explode 
it by means of artillery fire. 

By the time the 109th, curious as to 
the marked attention they were receiving 
from the Hun guns, discovered the dump, 
it was too late to seek other shelter, so all 
they could do was to contrive such pro- 
tection as was possible and hug the ground, 
expecting each succeeding shell to land in 
the midst of the dump and set off an 
explosion that probably would leave nothing 
of the regiment but its traditions. 

Probably half the shells intended for 



AT GRIPS WITH DEATH 161 

the ammunition pile landed in the woods. 
Dreadful as such a bombardment always 
is, the men of the 109th fairly gasped 
with relief when each screeching shell 
ended with a bang among the trees, for 
shells that landed there were in no danger 
of exploding that heap of ammunition. 

The night of strain and tension passed. 
Strange as it may seem, the Boche gunners 
were unable to reach the dump. 

In the night a staff officer from brigade 
headquarters had found Colonel Brown 
and informed him that he was to relinquish 
command of the regiment to become 
adjutant to the commandant of a port of 
debarkation. Lieutenant-Colonel Henry 
W. Coulter, of Greensburg, Pa., took com- 
mand of the regiment. 

Colonel Coulter is a brother of Brigadier- 
General Richard Coulter, one time com- 
mander of the Tenth Pennsylvania, later 
commander of an American port in France. 
A few days later. Colonel Coulter was 
wounded in the foot, and Colonel Samuel 
V. Ham, a regular army officer, became 
commander. As an evidence of the vicissi- 
tudes of the Pennsylvania regiments, the 
109th had eight regimental commanders in 



162 THE IRON DIVISION 

two months. All except Colonel Brown and 
Colonel Coulter were regular army men. 

The 110th was relieved, and dropped 
back for a rest of two days, August 1st 
and 2d. The men were nervous and 
"fidgety," to quote one of the officers, for 
the first time since their first "bath of 
steel," south of the Marne. Both nights 
they were supposed to be resting they were 
shelled and bombed from the air con- 
tinuously, and both days were put in at 
the "camions sanitaire," or "delousing 
machines," where each man got a hot 
bath and had his clothes thoroughly disin- 
fected and cleaned. 

Thus, neither night nor day could be 
called restful by one who was careful of 
his English, although the baths probably 
did more to bolster up the spirits of the 
men than anything else that could have 
happened to them. Anyway, when the 
two-day period was ended and the regiment 
again set off for the north, headed for the 
Vesle and worse things than any that had 
gone before, it marched away whistling 
and singing, with apparently not a care 
in the world. 

It was about this time that the first of 



AT GRIPS WITH DEATH 163 

the Pennsylvania artillery, one battalion of 
the 107th Regiment, came into the zone 
of operations, and soon its big guns began 
to roar back at the Germans in company 
with the French and other American 
artillery. 

The guns and their crews had troubles 
of their own in forging to the front, although 
most of it was of a kind they could look 
back on later with a laugh, and not the 
soul-trying, mind-searing experiences of the 
infantry. 

The roads that had been so hard for the 
foot soldiers to traverse were many times 
worse for the big guns. The 108th, for 
instance, at one time was twelve hours 
in covering eight miles of road. 

When it came to crossing the Marne, 
in order to speed up the crossing, the regi- 
ment was divided, half being sent farther 
up the river. When night fell, it was 
learned that the half that had crossed 
lower down had the field kitchen and no 
rations and the other half had all the 
rations and no field kitchen to cook them. 
Other organizations came to the rescue in 
both instances. 

At six o'clock one evening, not yet having 



164 THE IRON DIVISION 

had evening mess, the regiment was ordered 
to move to another town, which it reached 
at nine o'clock. Men and horses had been 
settled down for the night by ten o'clock 
and, as all was quiet, the officers went to 
the village. There they found an inn- 
keeper bemoaning the fact that, just as 
he had gotten a substantial meal ready 
for the officers of another regiment, they 
had been ordered away, and the food was 
all ready, with nobody to eat it. 

The hungry officers looked over the 
"spread." There was soup, fried chicken, 
cold ham, string beans, peas, sweet pota- 
toes, jam, bread and butter, and wine. 
They assured the innkeeper he need worry 
no further about losing his food, and 
promptly took their places about the table. 
The first spoonfuls of soup just were being 
lifted when an orderly entered, bearing 
orders for the regiment to move on at once. 
They were under way again, the officers 
still hungry, by 11.45 o'clock, and marched 
until 6.30 A. M., covering thirty kilometres, 
or more than eighteen miles. 

The 103d Ammunition Train also had 
come up now, after experiences that pre- 
pared it somewhat for what was to come 



AT GRIPS WITH DEATH 165 

later. For instance, when delivering ammu- 
nition to a battery under heavy shellfire, 
a detachment of the train had to cross a 
small stream on a little, flat bridge, without 
guard rails. A swing horse of one of the 
wagons became frightened when a shell 
fell close by. The horse shied and plunged 
over the edge, wedging itself between the 
bridge and a small footbridge alongside. 

The stream was in a small valley, quite 
open to enemy fire, and for the company 
to have waited while the horse was gotten 
out would have been suicidal. So the 
main body passed on and the caisson crew 
and drivers, twelve men in all, were left 
to pry the horse out. For three hours they 
worked, patiently and persistently, until 
the frantic animal was freed. 

They were under continuous and venom- 
ous fire all the while. Shrapnel cut the 
tops of trees a bare ten feet away. Most 
of the time they and the horses were com- 
pelled to wear gas masks, as the Hun tossed 
over a gas shell every once in a while for 
variety — ^he was "mixing them." The gas 
hung long in the valley, for it has *'an 
affinity, " as the chemists say, for water, and 
will follow the course of a stream. 



166 THE IRON DIVISION 

High explosives "cr-r-r-umped" in places 
within two hundred feet, but the ammuni- 
tion carriers never even glanced up from 
their work, nor hesitated a minute. Just 
before dawn they got the horse free and 
started back for their own lines. Fifteen 
minutes later a high-explosive shell landed 
fairly on the little bridge and blew it to atoms. 

The 103d Field Signal Battalion, com- 
posed of companies chiefly from Pittsburgh, 
but with members from many other parts 
of the state, performed valiant service in 
maintaining lines of communication. Re- 
peatedly, men of the battalion, commanded 
by Major Fred G. Miller, of Pittsburgh, 
exposed themselves daringly in a welter 
of fire to extend telephone and telegraph 
lines, sometimes running them through 
trees and bushes, again laying them in 
hastily scooped out grooves in the earth. 

Frequently communication no sooner was 
established than a chance shell would 
sever the line, and the work was to do all 
over again. With cool disregard of danger, 
the signalmen went about their tasks, 
incurring all the danger to be found any- 
where — ^but without the privilege and sat- 
isfaction of fighting back. 



AT GRIPS WITH DEATH 167 

Under sniping rifle fire, machine gun 
and big shell bombardment and frequently 
drenched with gas, the gallant signalmen 
carried their work forward. There was 
little of the picturesque about it, but 
nothing in the service was more essential. 
Many of the men were wounded and gassed, 
a number killed, and several were cited 
and decorated for bravery. 



CHAPTER XI 

Drive to the Vesle 

WHEN the Hun grip was torn loose 
from the positions along the 
Ourcq, he had no other good 
stopping place short of the Vesle, so he 
Ht out for that river as fast as he could 
move his battalions and equipment. Again 
only machine guns and sniping rearguards 
were left to impede the progress of the 
pursuers, and again there were times when 
it was exceedingly difficult for the French 
and American forces to keep in contact 
with the enemy. 

The 32d Division, composed of Michigan 
and Wisconsin National Guards, had slipped 
into the front lines and, with regiments of 
the Rainbow Division, pressed the pursuit. 
The Pennsylvania regiments, with the 103d 
Engineers, and the 111th and the 112th 
Infantry leading, followed by the 109th 
and then the 110th, went forward in their 
rear, mopping up the few Huns they left 
in their wake who still showed fight. 

(168) 



DRIVE TO THE VESLE 169 

It had begun to rain again — Si heavy, 
dispiriting downpour, such as Northern 
France is subjected to frequently. The 
fields became morasses. The roads, cut 
up by heavy traffic, were turned to quag- 
mires. The distorted remains of what 
had been wonderful old trees, stripped of 
their foliage and blackened and torn by 
the breaths of monster guns, dripped dis- 
mally. In all that ruined, tortured land 
of horror on horror, there was not one 
bright spot, and there was only one thing 
to keep up the spirits of the soldiers — 
the Hun was definitely on the run. 

Drenched to the skin, wading in mud 
at times almost to their knees, amid the 
ruck and confusion of an army's wake, 
the Pennsylvanians trudged resolutely for- 
ward, inured to hardship, no longer sensible 
to ordinary discomforts, possessed of only 
one thought — to come to battle once more 
with the hateful foe and inflict further 
punishment in revenge for the gallant lads 
who had gone from the ranks. 

All the time they were subjected to 
long-distance shelling by the big guns, 
as the Hun strafed the countiy to the 
south in hope of hampering transport 



170 THE IRON DIVISION 

facilities and breaking up marching 
columns. All the time Boche fliers passed 
overhead, sometimes swooping low enough 
to slash at the columns with machine 
guns and at frequent intervals releasing 
bombs. There were casualties daily, al- 
though not, of course, on the same scale 
as in actual battle. 

Through Coulonges, Cohan, Dravegny, 
Longeville, Mont-sur-Courville and St. 
Gilles they plunged on relentlessly. 

Close by the hamlet of Chamery, near 
Cohan, the Pennsylvania men passed the 
grave of Lieutenant Quentin Roosevelt, 
who had been brought down there by an 
enemy airman a few weeks before and was 
buried by the Germans. French troops, 
leading the Allied pursuit, had come on 
the grave first and established a military- 
guard of honor over it and supplanted the 
rude cross and inscription erected by the 
Germans with a neater and more ornate 
marking. 

When the Americans arrived the French 
guard was removed and American soldiers 
mounted guard over the last resting place 
of the son of the onetime President. 

Just below Longeville, the Pennsylvan- 



DRIVE TO THE VESLE 171 

ians came into an area where the fire 
was intensified to the equal of anything 
they had passed through since leaving 
the Marne. All the varieties of Hun pro- 
jectiles were hurled at them, high explo- 
sives of various sizes, shrapnel and gas. 
Once more the misery and discomfort of 
the gas mask had to be undergone, but 
by this time the Pennsylvanians had learned 
well and truly the value of that little 
piece of equipment and had imbibed thor- 
oughly the doctrine that, unpleasant as 
it might be, the mask was infinitely better 
than a whiff of that dread, sneaking, pene- 
trating vapor with which the Hun poisoned 
the air. 

The "blonde beast" had his back to the 
Vesle and had turned to show his teeth 
and snarl in fury at our men closing in 
on him. 

The objective point on the river for the 
Pennsylvanians was Fismes. This was a 
town near the junction of the Vesle and 
Ardre rivers, which before the war had 
a population of a little more than 3,000. 
Here, in centuries long gone, the kings of 
France were wont to halt overnight on 
their way up to Rheims to be crowned. 



172 THE IRON DIVISION 

It was on a railroad running through 
Rheims to the east. A few miles west 
of Fismes the railroad divides, one branch 
winding away south west ward to Paris the 
other running west through Soissons and 
Compiegne. The town was one of the 
largest German munitions depots in the 
Soissons-Rheims sector and second in im- 
portance only to Soissons. 

Across the narrow river was the vil- 
lage of Fismette, destined to be the scene 
of the writing of a truly glorious page 
of Pennsylvania's military history. The 
past tense is used with regard to the 
existence of both places, as they virtually 
were wiped out in the process of forcing 
the Hun from the Vesle River barrier 
and sending him flying northward to the 
Aisne. 

The railroad through Fismes and in its 
vicinity runs along the top of an embank- 
ment, raising it above the surrounding 
territory. There was a time, before the 
Americans were able to cross the railroad, 
that the embankment became virtually 
the barrier dividing redeemed France from 
darkest Hunland along that front. At 
night patrols from both sides would move 



DRIVE TO THE VESLE 173 

forward to the railroad, and, burrowed in 
holes — the Germans in the north side and 
the Americans in the south — ^would watch 
and wait and Ksten for signs of an attack. 

Each knew the other was only a few 
feet away; at times, in fact, they could 
hear each other talking, and once in a 
while defiant badinage would be exchanged 
in weird German from the south and in 
ragtime, vaudeville English from the north. 
Appearance of a head above the embank- 
ment on either side was a signal for a 
storm of lead and steel. 

The Americans had this advantage over 
the Germans: They knew the Huns were 
doomed to continue their retreat, and 
that the hold-up along the railroad was 
very temporary, and the Germans now 
realized the same thing. Therefore, the 
Americans fought triumphantly, with vigor 
and dash; the Germans, sullenly and in 
desperation. 

One man of the 110th went to sleep in 
a hole in the night and did not hear the 
withdrawal just before dawn. Obviously 
his name could not be made public. When 
he woke it was broad daylight, and he 
was only partly concealed by a little hole 



174 THE IRON DIVISION 

in the railroad bank. There was nothing 
he could do. If he had tried to run for 
his regimental lines he would have been 
drilled like a sieve before he had gone 
fifty yards. Soon the German batteries 
would begin shelling, so he simply dug 
deeper into the embankment. 

"I just drove myself into that bank like 
a nail," he told his comrades later. He 
got away the next night. 

Richard Morse, of the 110th, whose 
home is in Harrisburg, went out with a 
raiding party. The Germans discovered 
the advance of the group and opened a 
concentrated fire, forcing them back. 
Morse was struck in the leg and fell. 
He was able to crawl, however, and crawl- 
ing was all he could have done anyway, 
because the only line of retreat open to 
him was being swept by a hail of machine 
gun bullets. As he crawled he was hit by 
a second bullet. Then a third one creased 
the muscles of his back. A few feet farther, 
and two more struck him, making five in all. 

Then he tumbled into a shell hole. He 
waited until the threshing fire veered from 
his vicinity and he had regained a little 
strength, then crawled to another hole 



DRIVE TO THE VESLE 175 

and flopped himself into that. Incredible 
as it may seem, he regained his own lines 
the fourth day by crawling from shell 
hole to shell hole, and started back to the 
hospital with every prospect of a quick 
recovery. He had been given up for 
dead, and the men of his own and neigh- 
boring companies gave him a rousing wel- 
come. He had nothing to eat during 
those four days, but had found an empty 
tin can, and when it rained caught enough 
water in that to assuage his thirst. 

Corporal George D. Hyde, of Mt. 
Pleasant, Company E, 110th, hid in a 
hole in the side of the railroad embank- 
ment for thirty-six hours on the chance of 
obtaining valuable information. When re- 
turning, a piece of shrapnel struck the 
pouch in which he carried his grenades. 
Examining them, he found the cap of 
one driven well in. It was a miracle 
it had not exploded and torn a hole through 
him. 

"You ought to have seen me throw that 
grenade away," he said. 

In this waiting time It was decided to 
clean up a position of the enemy that was 
thrust out beyond their general line, from 



176 THE IRON DIVISION 

which an annoying fire was kept up con- 
stantly. Accordingly, a battalion of the 
110th was sent over to wipe it out. 

The Rev. Mandeville J. Barker, rector 
of the Episcopal Church in Uniontown, 
Pa., is chaplain of the 110th, with the 
rank of first lieutenant. He had endeared 
himself to officers and men alike by his 
happy combination of buoyant, gallant 
cheerfulness, sturdy Americanism, deep 
Christianity, indifference to hardship and 
the tender care he gave to the wounded. 
He had become, indeed, the most beloved 
man in the regiment. 

He went over the top with the battalion 
that attacked by night on the heights of 
the Vesle. It was not his duty to go; in 
fact had the regimental commander known 
his intention, he probably would have 
been forbidden to go. But go he did. 
He had an idea that his job was to look 
after the men's bodies as well as their 
souls, and when there was stern fighting 
to do, he liked to be in a position where 
he could attend to both phases of his work. 

The attacking party wiped out the Hun 
machine gun nest after a sharp fight 
and then retired to their own lines, as 



DRIVE TO THE VESLE 177 

ordered. It was so dark that some of 
the wounded were overlooked. After the 
battalion returned, voices of American 
wounded could be heard out in that new 
No Man's Land, calling for help. Dr. 
Barker took his life and some first aid 
equipment and water in his two hands 
and slipped out into the dark, with only 
starshine and the voices of the wounded 
to guide him and, between the two armies, 
attended to the wounds of the men as 
best he could by the light of a small pocket 
torch, which he had to keep concealed 
from the enemy lookouts. 

One after another the clergyman hunted. 
Those who could walk he started back to 
the lines. Several he had to assist. One 
lad who was beyond help he sat beside 
and ministered to with the tenderness 
of a mother until the young soul struggled 
gropingly out into the Great Beyond. 
Then, with the tears rolling down his 
cheeks, the beloved "Sky Pilot" started back. 

But again the sound of a voice in agony 
halted him. This time, however, it was 
not English words that he heard, but a 
moaning petition in guttural German: 
"Ach Gott! Ach, mein lieber Gott!" 

12 



178 THE IRON DIVISION 

The men of the 110th loved their "par- 
son" even more for what he did then. 
He turned right about and went back, 
groping in the dark for the sobbing man. 
He found a curly-haired young German, 
wounded so he could not walk and in 
mortal terror, not of death or of the dark, 
but of those "terrible Americans who tor- 
ture and kill their prisoners." Such was 
the tale with which he and his comrades 
had been taught to loathe their American 
enemies. Dr. Barker treated his wounds 
and carried him back to the American 
lines. The youngster whimpered with fear 
when he found where he was going, and 
begged the clergyman not to leave him. 
When he finally was convinced that he 
would not be harmed, he kissed the chap- 
lain's hands, crying over them, and insisted 
on turning over to Dr. Barker every- 
thing he owned that could be loosened — 
helmet, pistol, bayonet, cartridges, but- 
tons, and other odds and ends. 

"All hung over with loot, the parson 
was, when he came back," said a ser- 
geant in telling of the scene afterward. 

"The Fighting Parson," as the men 
called him, did not figltc, ^.ctunlly, but 



/.■■ 



DRIVE TO THE VESLE 179 

he went as close to it as possible. On one 
occasion snipers were bothering the men. 
Dr. Barker borrowed a pair of glasses, 
lay flat on the field and, after prolonged 
study, discovered the offenders, four of 
them, and notified an artillery observer. 
A big gun casually swung its snout around, 
barked three times and the snipers sniped 
no more. Two or three days later, the 
regiment went over and took that section 
of German line and found what was left 
of the four men. "The Parson's Boche," 
the men called them. 

Toward the last of the action below 
the Vesle, a group of men of the 110th 
had established an outpost in a large 
cave, which extended a considerable dis- 
tance back in a cliff — ^just how far none 
of the men ever discovered. After they 
had been there several days, Dr. Barker 
arranged to cheer them a little in their 
lonely vigil. The cave had been an under- 
ground quarry. The Germans had occupied 
it, knew exactly where it was and its 
value as a hiding place, and kept a con- 
stant stream of machine gun bullets flying 
past its mouth. 

For three weeks it had been possible 



180 THE IRON DIVISION 

to enter or leave the cave only after dark. 
Even then it was risky, for the mouth 
of the cave was only about fifty yards 
from the German trenches and slight sounds 
could be heard. After dark the Hun fire 
was laid down about the entrance at every 
suspicious noise. Sometimes the men inside 
would amuse themselves by heaving stones 
outside from a safe position within, to hear 
Fritz turn loose his "pepper boxes." 

Despite these difficulties. Dr. Barker 
got a motion picture outfit into the cave 
and gavfe a show of six reels to the men 
stationed there, after which Y. M. C. A. 
men entertained them with songs and 
eccentric dances. Men who saw that 
performance, in the light of torches and 
flambeaux, will never forget the picture. 

Toward the last there were sounds from 
the farther interior of the cave, and two 
American soldiers walked into the circle, 
blinking their eyes. Nobody gave much 
attention to them, supposing they just 
had wandered away a few minutes before, 
until one of them interrupted a song with 
the hoarsely whispered query: 

"Got any chow?" Which is army slang 
for food. 



DRIVE TO THE VESLE 181 

"Aw, go lay down," was the querulous 
reply of the man addressed. "Ain't yuh 
got sense enough not to interrupt a show? 
Shut up, will yuh?" 

" Gee, but I'm hungry," came the answer. 
"I need some chow. We been lost in this 
doggone cave for two days." 

Investigation developed that he was 
telling the truth, and Dr. Barker pro- 
duced from some mysterious horn of 
plenty some chocolate, which the fam- 
ished men ate with avidity. With the 
natural, healthy curiosity of American 
youth, they had set out to explore the 
cave and had become lost in its mazes. 
Only the lights and noises of Dr. Barker's 
concert had led them out. 

An instance of the attitude of mind of 
the Pennsylvania men, who felt nothing 
but contempt for their foes, and of how 
little the arrogance and intolerance of 
the typical Prussian officer impressed them, 
was given by members of the 111th Ambu- 
lance Company, working with the 111th 
Infantry. 

Soldiers of Pennsylvania Dutch descent 
had amazed the Germans more than once 
not only by understanding the conversa- 



182 THE IRON DIVISION 

tion of the enemy, but by their intense 
anger, almost ferocity, which they dis- 
played on occasions when confronted with 
"the Intolerable Thing" called the Prussian 
spirit. Offspring of men and women of 
sturdy, free-minded stock who fled from 
oppression in Europe, they flamed with 
the spirit of the real liberty lover when 
in contact with the Prussian. 

A little group of the tilth's ambulan- 
ciers when carrying back the wounded, 
met a German major who was groaning 
and complaining vigorously and demand- 
ing instant attention. The contrast be- 
tween his conduct and that of American 
oflScers, who almost invariably told the 
litter-bearers to go on and pick up worse 
wounded men, was glaring, but finally 
the bearers good-humoredly decided to get 
the major out of the way to stop his noise. 
He was not wounded severely, but was 
unable to walk, and they lifted him to 
the stretcher with the same care they 
gave to all the wounded. 

Promptly the major began to upbraid 
the Americans, speaking in his native 
tongue. In the language of a Billingsgate 
fishwife — or what corresponds to one in 



DRIVE TO THE VESLE 183 

Hunland — ^he cursed the Americans, root, 
stock and branch, from President Wilson 
down to the newest recruit in the army. 

Thomas G. Fox, of Hummelstown, Pa., 
one of the bearers, understood his every 
word and repeated the diatribe in Enghsh 
to his fellows, who became restive under 
the tirade. At last the major said: 

"You Americans think you are going 
to win the war, but you're not." 

That was too much for Fox and his 
companions. 

"You think you are going to be carried 
back to a hospital, but you're not," said 
Fox. Whereupon the litter was turned 
over neatly and the major deposited, not 
too gently, on the hard ground. For some 
time he lay there, roaring his maledic- 
tions. Then he started to crawl back, 
and by the time he got to a hospital, 
he had lost some of his insolence. 



CHAPTER XII 
In Death Valley 

HUN infantry in considerable force 
held Fismes. Their big guns had 
been moved across the Vesle, tacit 
admission they had no hope of holding the 
south bank of the river, but the strength of 
the force in the town indicated the cus- 
tomary intention to sell out as dearly as 
possible to their dogged and unfaltering 
pursuers. 

Lying in the woods, or whatever other 
shelter they could find, our infantrymen for 
two days watched French and American 
batteries moving into position. It seemed 
the procession was interminable. 

*' There'll be something doing for Fritz 
when those babies get going," was the 
opinion of the Pennsylvania doughboys. 

French and American forces already had 
crossed the river east and west of Fismes, 
which was almost the geographic center of 
the line between Soissons and Hheims. To 
stabilize the line, it was essential not only 

(184) 



IN DEATH VALLEY 185 

that Fismes be taken, but that the river 
crossings be forced and Fismette seized. 

Forward bodies of infantry continually 
had been feeling out the German positions 
in Fismes and on Saturday afternoon, 
August 3rd, reconnaissance parties from the 
168th Infantry, formerly the Third Iowa 
National Guard, of the Rainbow Division, 
entered the southern edge of the town. 

They clung there desperately until the 
next day, but the Germans deluged them 
with gas, which hung close because of the 
river and the heavy atmosphere, and it 
was deemed inadvisable for the small force 
to remain. Their reconnaissance had been 
completed and they were ordered to return 
to their lines. The information they 
brought back aided the staff materially in 
planning the general attack. 

The Germans had placed heavy guns on 
the crests of hills one or two kilometers 
north of the river, from which they poured 
in a flanking fire. 

A few hours after the return of the men 
of the 168th, the massed French and Ameri- 
can batteries turned loose with a racket 
that seemed to rend the universe. 

The Germans had been dorpping shells 



186 THE IRON DIVISION 

intermittently since daylight, but even 
this spasmodic firing stopped entirely under 
the hurricane of shrapnel, high explosive 
and gas shells from the Allied artillery, 
which swept the town, the river crossings 
and the country to the north. It was a 
case of "keep your head down, Fritzie 
boy," or lose it. 

The artillery preparation was not pro- 
tracted. After an hour or so, it steadied 
down into a rolling barrage and the first 
wave of attackers went over. The 32d 
and 42d (Rainbow) Divisions, exhausted, 
had been brought out of the front line and 
Pennsylvania's iron men slipped into place. 

It fell to the fortune of the 112th Infantry 
to lead the advance on Fismes and, sup- 
ported though it was by other regiments and 
by tremendous artillery fire, it was the 112th 
Pennsylvania that actually took Fismes. 

There was the usual harassing fire from 
enemy machine guns and snipers, especially 
to the east, but these were silenced after a 
time and the 112th romped into the south- 
ern edge of the town. Then ensued a 
repetition, on a larger scale, of the street 
and house fighting that had been experi- 
enced before in other villages and towns. 



IN DEATH VALLEY 187 

Scouts crept from corner to corner, hiding 
behind bits of smashed masonry, working 
through holes in house walls and into 
cellars. A haze of dust kicked up by the 
shells hung in the bright sunlight. 

Every open stretch of street was swept 
by rifle and machine gun fire from one or 
both sides. Americans and Germans were 
so mingled that sometimes they shared the 
same house, firing out of different windows 
on different streets, and varying the pro- 
cedure by attempts to kill their housemates. 

As the Americans crept slowly forward, 
always toward the river, the Germans 
showed no slightest inclination to follow 
their comrades to the north bank, and it 
became apparent that they were a sacrifice 
offered up by the German command to 
delay, as long as possible, the progress of 
those terrible Americans. They had been 
left behind with no hope of succor, simply 
to sell their lives as dearly as possible. 
Quite naturally, they fought like trapped 
wolves as long as fighting was possible. 
When convinced they had no further chance 
to win, they dropped their weapons and 
squalled : ' ' Kamerad ! ' ' 

Two American officers and some wounded 



188 THE IRON DIVISION 

men worked their way into one of the 
houses. Inside, they found two unwounded 
men from Pittsburgh. Ahnost as the two 
parties joined forces, one of the unwounded 
Pittsburghers, venturing incautiously^ near 
what had been a window, stopped a sniper's 
bullet and fell dead. The wounded were 
made as comfortable as possible to await 
the stretcher-bearers and the two officers 
and one enlisted man started to investigate 
the house. 

They were crawling on all fours. They 
came into a dismantled room and raised 
their heads to look over a pile of debris. 
They looked straight into the eyes of two 
Germans. One had a machine gun, the 
other a trench bomb in each hand. These 
German trench bombs were known among 
our soldiers as "potato mashers," because 
they are about the size of a can of sweet 
corn, fastened on the end of a short stick. 
They are thrown by the stick, and are a 
particularly nasty weapon — one of the worst 
the Germans had, many soldiers thought. 

The German with the bombs was slowly 
whirling them about by the handles, 
exactly like a pair of Indian clubs, as one 
of the Americans described it afterward. 



IN DEATH VALLEY 189 

For the time you might have counted ten, 
there was not a movement on either side, 
because the men were so surprised, except 
that the German with the bombs kept 
whirhng them slowly, around and around. 
The other German stood like a statue, but 
making funny, nervous noises — "uck-uck- 
uck" — in his throat. The Americans, tell- 
ing about it later, frankly admitted they 
were too scared to move for a few moments, 
expecting every second the man with the 
"potato mashers" would throw them. 

The remarkable tableau ended with the 
crash of a rifle. The American private 
soldier had fired "from the hip." The 
German with the bombs bent forward as 
if he had a sharp pain in his stomach, but he 
did not come up again. He kept on going 
until his head hit the pile of debris, as if he 
were salaaming or kow-towing to the Ameri- 
cans. Then he collapsed in an inert heap 
on the floor, still holding his bombs. 

The other turned and ran, stumbling 
through the wreckage, out through the 
little garden in which flowers and green 
stuff still struggled through the broken 
stone. As he ran, he cried in a curious, 
whimpering, muffled tone, like a frightened 



190 THE IRON DIVISION 

animal, his big helmet crushed down over 
his ears, a grotesque figure. He got out 
mto the street, out into the open where 
machine guns and rifles still called from 
corner to corner and window to window. 
He was drilled in a dozen places at once 
and collapsed like a heap of dusty rags. 

There were innumerable instances of 
individual gallantry and of narrow escapes. 
In days of fighting when virtually every 
man performed a hero's part, it was impos- 
sible for anyone to keep track of all of even 
the more outstanding cases, and many a 
lad's deed w^ent unnoticed while another's 
act brought him a citation and the coveted 
Distinguished Service Cross, the difference 
being that one was observed and reported 
and the other was not. A very small 
proportion of the deserving deeds were 
rewarded for this reason. 

Among the narrow escapes from death, 
probably Lieutenant Walter A. Daven- 
port, formerly of Philadelphia, established a 
record. A machine gun bullet struck his 
belt buckle, was deflected and ripped a 
long gash in the muscles of his abdo- 
men. He returned to duty before his 
regiment, the 111th, had finished its work 



IN DEATH VALLEY 191 

in Fismette, a few weeks later, and was 
slightly gassed. 

It was at Fismes that Captain John M. 
Gentner, of Philadelphia, acting commander 
of the first battalion of the 109th, was 
wounded. He had been commander of 
Company C, but took over command of 
the battalion when Captain Gearty was 
killed in the Bois de Conde, below the 
Marne. After he was wounded, Captain 
Gentner was made the subject of a remark- 
able tribute from men of his battalion. 
They WTote for newspaper publication a 
letter of eulogy, in which they said: 

"The influence of Captain Gentner is 
still leading on the men of his battalion. 
None speak of him but in admiration and 
thankfulness for having helped them to 
be good soldiers. Daring, even brilliant, he 
led his men into seemingly hazardous 
attacks, and yet w^e felt a sense of safety. 
Other commanders say: 'I wouldn't send a 
man where I wouldn't go myself,' but 
Captain Gentner wouldn't send men where 
he would go himself. We looked upon him 
as a father. He has brought in wounded 
men from places where no one else would 
venture. He delighted in dangerous patrols 



192 THE IRON DIVISION 

and often regretted that his position pre- 
vented him from leading combat patrols. 
In places where food came to us rarely and 
in small quantity, he would claim that he 
had eaten when we knew that neither food 
nor water had crossed his lips for twenty- 
four hours. He was filled with admiration 
for his men — ^men who willingly would 
have followed him through the gates of 
hell, just because no trouble, no privation 
was too great for him to make his men 
comfortable." 

What a difference between that relation- 
ship of officer and enlisted man, and the 
sight our men saw of German soldiers 
being kicked and beaten with sabres by 
German officers in an effort to drive them 
forward into battle while the officers 
remained behind out of harm's way ! 

With their never-failing sense of the 
dramatic and their natural tendency to 
picturesquely appropriate nomenclature, our 
men named the valley of the Vesle "Death 
Valley" after the desperate fighting they 
encountered there. 

And so they took Fismes, these gallant 
American daredevils. Slowly but surely 
they went through it, mopping it up in a 



IN DEATH VALLEY 193 

scientific manner. It was costly — such 
warfare always is — but they wiped out 
one German post after another, driving the 
Huns to the very edge of the town on the 
north, where they held on desperately for a 
few days until the American occupation 
was complete, and the last German foot- 
hold was gone from the Soissons-Rheims 
pocket, which for two weeks had been the 
focal point for the eyes of the world. 

Even before the operation was complete, 
and in callous disregard of the men they 
themselves had left behind to impede the 
American advance, the Germans cut loose 
with a hot artillery fire from the heights 
north of the river. 

They are not unlike the chalk cliffs of 
Dover, only not so high, these elevations 
along the Vesle. There were several high 
points on the north bank on which the 
Germans had observation posts, from which 
they could look down upon Fismes and the 
surrounding country as persons in a theatre 
balcony view the stage, and it was a terrible 
fire they poured in. 

Already their big guns had been with- 
drawn to the line of the Aisne, which is 
only five miles to the north and therefore 

13 



194 THE IRON DIVISION 

well within range. Lighter pieces in great 
number crowned the high ground nearer 
the Vesle, and machine guns held their 
usual prominent place in the German 
scheme. Once more they brought flame 
projectors into play, using them in this 
instance at what is believed to have been the 
greatest distance they tried to operate these 
weapons during the war. They accomplished 
little with the "flamenwerfer," however. 

Night and day the gun duel continued. 
The French and American batteries method- 
ically set about to break up the concentra- 
tion of Hun fire. Monday, August 5th, the 
shelling became so violent that observation 
virtually was impossible and maps had to 
be used, the American gun commanders 
picking out German positions that had been 
marked down earlier. 

German 105's and 155's (about four and 
six inches) hurled their high explosive 
shells. Shrapnel sprayed over the entire 
territory, and the American positions in 
the rear were heavily pounded and deluged 
with gas. The Germans shelled forests, 
crossroads, highways, clumps of trees and 
all other places where they thought troops 
or supplies might be concentrated or passing. 



IN DEATH VALLEY 195 

Every position in the American lines 
which ordinarily would have been good 
from a military viewpoint became almost 
untenable from the fact that the Germans, 
having so recently been driven out, knew 
the terrain and the positions accurately. 
It was as safe in the open as in the sup- 
posed shelters. 

No sooner had the occupation of Fismes 
been established completely than the Amer- 
^ icans calmly prepared to cross the river and 
take Fismette, regardless of the German 
resistance. For some reason still unex- 
plained, since after developments have 
made it clear the Germans had no real hope 
of stopping short of the Chemin-des-Dames, 
north of the Aisne, they made the taking 
of Fismette almost a first-class operation, 
even driving the Americans back across 
the river after they once had established 
themselves, and counter-attacking repeat- 
edly. 

Presumably, they had been unable to 
get away their vast quantities of muni- 
tions and supplies between the Vesle and 
the Aisne, and needed to hold up the pur- 
suit while these were extricated. 

As a first step in the crossing of the river, 



196 THE IRON DIVISION 

Major Robert M. Vail, of Scranton, com- 
manding the 108th Machine Gun BattaHon, 
operating with the 55th Infantry Brigade, 
sent over two companies of machine gun- 
ners. They waded the river, which was 
nearly to their armpits in places, holding 
their weapons above their heads. Others 
carried ammunition in boxes on their heads. 
They went over in a storm of shells and 
bullets, which took a heavy toll, but they 
established a bridgehead on the north 
bank and, fighting like demons, held it 
against tremendous odds while men of the 
103d Engineers, ordered up for the work, 
threw bridges across the stream. 

It was in this work that units of the 
engineer regiment, particularly Company 
C, of Potts ville, were badly mauled. Work- 
ing swiftly and unconcernedly in the midst 
of a tornado of almost every conceivable 
kind and size of shell, most of the time sus- 
taining the discomfort of their gas masks, 
the engineers conducted themselves like 
veterans of years of service, instead of the 
tyros they actually were. Officers and 
men of the other organizations, watching 
the performance, thrilled with pride at the 
outstanding bravery of these heroic young 



IN DEATH VALLEY 197 

Americans. Their own officers were too 
absorbed in their task to appreciate the 
work of the men until afterward, when they 
had also to mourn their losses. 

Methodically, working in water above 
their waists, many of them, the engineers 
thrust the arm of their bridge across the 
stream. Shells raged about them, churn- 
ing the water to foam and throwing up 
geysers of mud and spray. Now and then 
a flying fragment of steel struck one of the 
toilers, whereupon he either dropped and 
floated downstream, uninterested in the 
further progress of the war, or struggled to 
the bank for first aid and made his way to a 
hospital. 

The first bridge was nearly completed 
when a big shell scored a direct hit and it 
disappeared in a mass of kindling wood. 
Patiently and tenaciously, the engineers, 
deprived by their duties of even the satis- 
faction of seizing a rifle and trying to 
wreak a little vengeance, started to rebuild 
the structure. 

Hampered by the German fire, the bridge 
building was slow and, the machine gun- 
ners having made a good crossing, infantry 
was started over the ford. The process of 



198 THE IRON DIVISION 

throwing men across was greatly hastened 
when at last the first bridge was completed. 
Other spans soon were ready, but the 
engineers knew no cessation from their 
task, for all too frequently Hun projectiles 
either tore holes in the bridges or wrecked 
them altogether. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Stars of Grim Drama 

IN Fismette, the Pennsylvanians ran 
into a stone wall of resistance. The 
enemy made desperate efforts to dis- 
lodge them and drive them back across the 
river. One counter-attack after another 
was met and beaten off by the valiant little 
band of Americans, supported by the roar- 
ing guns on the heights to the south. 

The Pennsylvanians had the double sat- 
isfaction now of knowing their own artillery 
brigade was mingling its fire with that of 
the other American and French batteries. 
On August 8th, Brigadier-General William 
G. Price, of Chester, rode up to regimental 
headquarters of the 109th Infantry and 
greeted his friends among the oflBcers. He 
informed them that his brigade was imme- 
diately behind and that he was hunting 
division headquarters to report for action. 
A guide was assigned him and the General 
left in his motor car. Word soon spread 
through the infantry regiments that all the 

(199) 



200 THE IRON DIVISION 

Pennsylvania gunners at last were in the 
fight. 

The weather turned wet again, varying 
from a drizzle to a heavy downpour, but 
never quite ceasing. 

The penetration of Fismette went slowly 
but steadily on, in the face of strong 
resistance, the Germans reacting viciously 
at every point of contact. Here, as else- 
where along the front between Soissons and 
Rheims, the action consisted of a series of 
sharp local engagements, with considerable 
hand-to-hand fighting, in which American 
bayonets played an important role. 

Amid the fever of battle and not knowing 
what moment may prove their last, men 
move as if in a trance. Hours and days 
pass undistinguished and unrecorded. With 
the fundamental scheme of existence 
shattered and with friends of years and 
chums of months of campaigning killed 
between sunrise and sunset, it is no wonder 
that men's minds become abnormal and 
their acts superhuman. 

In quiet, peaceful homes it is impossible 
to understand this psychology. One may 
comprehend the mental shock sustained 
when a relative or neighbor or close friend 



STARS OF GRIM DRAMA 201 

falls victim to accident or disease, but that 
feeling is but distantly related to the effect 
upon the soldier when he realizes that a 
dozen, possibly half a hundred, of his com- 
rades and close associates of weeks of work 
and recreation have been wiped out of 
existence in an hour — ^men Avith whom he 
had talked daily, possibly was talking at 
the time of dissolution. 

The same experience is repeated day 
after day with deep effect upon his mental, 
as well as his physical, state of being. 
Even in civil life, one learns that loss of 
sleep in time acts like a drug. After twenty- 
four or thirty-six hours without sleep, it 
becomes increasingly easy to do without 
further, until the limit of human endurance 
is reached and the victim collapses. Also, 
infrequent food and drink may be borne at 
increasingly long intervals. The condition 
is not infrequently described, accurately 
enough, as being "too hungry to eat," or 
" too tired to rest." Inevitably the reaction 
comes, and the longer the relief is postponed, 
the worse is the reaction. For this reason, 
the first day in repose for soldiers after a 
long campaign is usually worse than the 
campaign itself. 



202 THE IRON DIVISION 

But while the deprivation of sleep, food 
and drink continues, it is undeniable that, 
though the physical being may support the 
loss with decreasing discomfort up to the 
point of collapse, the effect upon the senses 
is almost that of an opiate. Men lose their 
sense of proportion. Everything ordinarily 
of prime importance recedes into the back- 
ground. The soldier is imbued with but 
one overmastering aspiration — to go on and 
on and on. 

It is no wonder that, in such case, he feels 
that his own fate is a small matter, as it is 
liable to be sealed at any moment, in the 
same way as that of his comrades; no 
wonder that he faces death with the same 
indifference as a man at home faces a 
summer shower. 

This, then, is the state to which our 
Pennsylvania soldiers had now been reduced, 
and in consequence their deeds of personal 
heroism began to multiply. This was 
the period when individual men achieved 
most frequently the great glory of the 
service — citation and decoration for bravery 
in action. They had overstepped, indi- 
vidually and collectively, all the bounds of 
personal fear of death or injury. 



STARS OF GRIM DRAMA 203 

The Germans hurled one fresh regiment 
after another into the inferno which was 
Fismette, in a determined effort to dislodge 
that pitiful handful of Americans which 
had found lodgment on its river edge. 
Five times fresh, vigorous forces, with 
hardly a lull, were hurled at the position. 
All the time the guns kept up an incessant 
cannonade, both of Fismette and Fismes 
and the back reaches of the Allied front, 
while the attacking forces were strongly 
supported by airplanes, artillery and machine 
guns. 

The tide of battle swayed back and 
forth as the Americans, reinforced at 
intervals by groups of men who succeeded 
in crossing the river, worked their way 
forv/ard, only to be hurled back by vastly 
superior forces of the enemy, and hero 
after hero stalked, actor-like, across the 
murky stage. Some gallant acts were 
recorded and, duly and in due time, won 
their reward. Manv more never were 
heard of, for the reason that participants 
and witnesses were be^^ond mortal honor, 
or else the only witnesses were part and 
parcel of the heroic act and therefore, 
according to the Anglo-Saxon code of 



204 THE IRON DIVISION 

honor, their Hps were sealed. They could 
not tell of their own fine deeds. 

It was the 111th Infantry which came 
into its gallant own in the first penetration 
of Fismette, and its men took high rank 
in the heroic galaxy constituting the Iron 
Division. 

Probably the most noteworthy deed of 
individual heroism was that of Corporal 
Raymond B. Rowbottom, of Avalon, Pa., 
near Pittsburgh, member of Company E, 
and Corporal James D. Moore, Erie, Pa., 
of Company G, both of the 111th. 

They were on outpost duty together with 
automatic rifle teams in a house beyond 
the spinning mill on the western edge of 
Fismette. The mill had been one of the 
hotly contested strongholds of the Germans 
because of its size and the thickness of its 
old stone walls. The situation was such 
that the loss of the firing post in the house 
would have endangered not only a battalion 
which was coming up under Lieutenant 
L. Howard Fielding, of Llanerch, Pa., but 
also would have made the whole military 
operation more difficult, if not impossible. 

A flare thrown from a German post 
landed in the room where Rowbottom and 



STARS OF GRIM DRAMA 205 

Moore had established themselves, and in a 
moment the place was ablaze. This was 
on the night of August 12th. The flare 
had been thrown for the particular purpose 
of providing illumination for the German 
snipers and machine gunners to see their 
target. The fire that started from it not 
only answered this purpose better than the 
flare alone could have, but also distracted 
the attention of the American outpost and 
threatened to drive them from the house. 

There was, of course, no water in the 
house except the small quantity contained 
in the canteens of the men. With this 
absurdly inadequate supply and their own 
bare hands, fighting flames in a room as 
bright as day and under a heavy, concen- 
trated machine gun and rifle fire. Row- 
bottom and Moore extinguished the blaze 
and then calmly resumed their automatic 
rifle work. For hours they went thirsty, 
until their throats were parched and their 
tongues swelled. For this deed, both men 
were cited and given the Distinguished 
Service Cross. 

Five wounded men were left behind 
unavoidably when a detachment of the 
111th was called hurriedly back from an 



^06 THE IRON DIVISION 

advanced post which it was seen could not 
be held without too great sacrifice. Private 
Albert R. Murphy, of Philadelphia, a 
member of the sanitary detachment of the 
111th, volunteered to go out after them. 
Despite seemingly insurmountable obstacles 
and constantly under vicious fire from 
scores of enemy marksmen. Murphy stuck 
to his task until the last man was back, 
although it took three days and nights of 
repeated effort. He, too, was cited and 
given the Distinguished Service Cross. 

A sergeant of Company C, 111th Infantry, 
was shot on August 10th and lay in an 
exposed position. Sergeant Alfred Steven- 
son, of Chester, a member of the same 
company, volunteered to go to the rescue. 
He successfully made his way through the 
enemy fire to the side of the wounded com- 
rade. As he leaned over the man to get a 
grip on him so he could carry the burden, a 
sharpshooter's bullet struck him. Steven- 
son partially raised himself and said to 
the wounded man: 

" Gee, they got me that time." 
As he spoke the words, the sniper shot 
him again and he fell dead. The wounded 
man lay in a clump of bushes and between 



STARS OF GRIM DRAMA 207 

there and our lines was an open space of 
considerable width. When Stevenson did 
not reappear with the wounded man, Cor- 
poral Robert R. Riley, of Chester, a member 
of the same company, and two comrades 
asked permission to go after the two. 

At their first effort, all were wounded 
and forced to return. Corporal Riley's 
wound was not severe, however, and he 
insisted upon making another attempt. 
This time he reached the spot, only to 
find his old schoolmate, Stevenson, dead, 
and the man for whom the effort was made 
able to crawl back after having first aid 
treatment. Riley collapsed on his way 
back and was carried in by Private Edward 
Davis and sent to a hospital, where he 
recovered and was awarded the Distin- 
guished Service Cross. 

On August 10th, a detachment of men 
of the 111th captured some enemy machine 
guns and a quantity of ammunition. Cor- 
poral Raymond Peacock, of Norristown, a 
member of Company F, was the only man 
available who knew how to operate the 
enemy gun, a Maxim. He had just been 
so badly wounded in the left shoulder that 
the arm was partially useless. Neverthe- 



208 THE IRON DIVISION 

less, he volunteered to go forward and 
operate the gun. He participated in a 
spirited assault, firing the weapon with 
one hand, until he was wounded again. A 
Distinguished Service Cross was his reward. 

An officer of the 111th called for a runner 
to take a message from Fismette back to 
Fismes. The path that had to be covered 
was pounded by big shells and sprayed with 
machine gun bullets, and the man who 
volunteered went but a short distance 
when he dropped, riddled like a sieve. 

Undaunted by the sight. Private Lester 
Carson, of Clearfield, Pa., a member of 
Company L, promptly volunteered and was 
given a duplicate message. His luck held, 
for he got through over the same route, 
by an exercise of daring, aggressiveness and 
care, and delivered the note. He, too, won 
a Distinguished Service Cross. 

For five days of the most intense fighting, 
from August 9th to 13th, Private Fred 
Otte, Fairmount City, Pa., a member of 
Company A, 111th Infantry, acted as a 
runner between his battalion headquarters 
in Fismes and the troops in Fismette. He 
made several trips across the Vesle under 
heavy shell and machine gun fire, and when 



STARS OF GRIM DRAMA 209 

the bridge was destroyed he continued his 
trips by swimming the river, in spite of wire 
entanglements in the water. For this he 
received a Distinguished Service Cross. 

Bugler Harold S. Gilham, of Pittsburgh, 
Company H, and Private Charles A. Print z, 
of Norristown, Company F, both of the 
111th, not only volunteered as runners to 
carry messages to the • rear, but on their 
return showed their scorn of the enemy by 
burdening themselves with heavy boxes of 
ammunition which was badly needed. 

Sergeant James R. McKenney, of Pitts- 
burgh, Company E, 111th Infantry, took 
out a patrol to mop up snipers. When he 
returned, successful, he was ordered to rest, 
but begged and obtained permission to take 
out another patrol. 

Sergeant Richard H. Vaughan, of Royers- 
ford. Pa., Company A, 111th Infantry, was 
severely gassed and his scalp was laid open 
by a piece of shrapnel. Despite this, he 
refused to go back for treatment, but had 
his wound treated on the field and con- 
tinued to command his platoon for four 
days until relieved. He died later of his 
injuries, but a Distinguished Service Cross 
was awarded to him and sent to his father. 



210 THE IRON DIVISION 

Dr. E. M. Vauglian, of Royersford, together 
with the text of the official citation, which 
told the tale of the Sergeant's heroism and 
concluded with the statement: 

"By his bravery and encouragement to 
his men, he exemplified the highest qualities 
of leadership." 

Corporal James V. Gleason, of Pottstown, 
Pa., Company A, 111th, was publicly com- 
mended and given the Distinguished Service 
Cross for his *' great aid in restoring and 
holding control of the line in absolute dis- 
regard to personal danger and without food 
or rest for seventy-two hours." How terse 
and yet how graphic are these precise words 
of the official citation ! 

Lieutenants Walter Ettinger, of Phoenix- 
ville, who later was killed, and Robert B. 
Woodbury, of Pottstown, the former an 
officer of Company D, and the latter of 
Company M, 111th Infantry, spent three 
sleepless days and nights aiding and en- 
couraging their men to hold a position. 

On August 12th, the Germans delivered 
an attack in force, preceded by an intense 
bombardment and accompanied by a rolling 
barrage, which was too pretentious to be 
met by the small American force in Fis- 



STARS OF GRIM DRAMA 211 

mette. In the face of those onrushing 
German hordes, there were but two things 
to do — die heroically but futilely or retire. 
True to American army traditions, under 
which men never are required to lay down 
their lives uselessly, the American force 
slowly, reluctantly and stubbornly retired 
across the river. 

Instantly the Franco-American guns gave 
tongue. They laid down upon Fismette 
a bombardment which made the German 
effort seem trifling. With the walls falling 
around them, the Germans began to flee. 
And then the task of conquering that stub- 
born little village was begun again. 

This second advance was led by a detach- 
ment of the 111th, under Captain James 
Archibald Williams and Lieutenant H. E. 
Leonard, both of Pittsburgh. They swam 
the Vesle under a hail of fire, for the enemy 
centered much of his artillery upon the 
bridges, and shrapnel and machine gun 
bullets fell upon them like rain. 

Soaked from head to foot, the Pennsyl- 
vanians got a footing on the northern 
bank, only to find they were unsupported 
as yet on either flank. Undaunted, they 
plunged forward into a little ravine which 



2H THE IRON DIVISION 

seemed to offer some protection. On the 
contrary, they found there had settled into 
it most of the gas with which the enemy 
had been drenching the town. Various 
kinds of the poisonous vapor, mustard gas, 
sneeze gas, tear gas and chlorine gas, had 
accumulated there in a seething mixture, 
providing the worst experience with this 
form of Hun deviltry the men had met. 

Gas masks were already in place, how- 
ever, and forward they went on the run. 
Machine guns chattered angrily at them, 
and the gunners stood their ground until 
the flashing bayonets of the Americans were 
almost at their breasts. Then they either 
broke and fled or bleated the customary 
plea for mercy. 



CHAPTER XIV 

Ambulanciers to Front 

WHILE all this was going forward, 
shells had wrecked all the bridges 
over the river but one and it was 
so damaged as to be considered unsafe, so 
the little force in Fismette had to hold on 
as best it could until reinforcements could 
be thrown across. It was at this juncture 
that there entered into fame a new set of 
candidates for military decorations. 

The men of the 103d Sanitary Train of the 
Twenty-eighth Division had been perform- 
ing their arduous and perilous tasks in a 
gallant and self-sacrificing manner, but 
they now achieved the apotheosis of 
bravery. 

In the cellar of a house in Fismette there 
had been assembled twenty -eight American 
wounded, and it was necessary to evacuate 
them across the river in order that they 
might reach hospitals and receive proper 
treatment. Five times the house had 
been struck by shells and Sergeant William 

(213) 



214 THE IRON DIVISION 

Xukens, of Cheltenham, Pa., and a few 
other men had to scrape the debris off the 
wounded. Four times the comrades of 
Lukens had to dig him out when shells 
buried him under an avalanche of earth. 

Captain Charles Hendricks, of Blairsville, 
Pa., remained in the cellar three days and 
four nights, and twice was buried by shells. 

The ambulance men who finally carried 
the wounded back across the river, after 
hairbreadth escapes and thrilling experi- 
ences, were headed by Captain George E. 
McGinnis, of Philadelphia, and were mem- 
bers of Ambulance Company 110, formerly 
Ambulance Company S in the National 
Guard. 

The advance party of rescuers set out for 
Fismes in a touring car. It was made up 
of Major Frederick Hartenz, of Pittsburgh; 
Major Edward M. Hand, of Coraopolis, 
Captain McGinnis and Privates Walter 
McGinnis and Walter Frosch, both of 
Philadelphia, and all members of the med- 
ical corps. 

Frosch was at the wheel. They took the 
road down the hill on the southern slope 
of the Vesle at breakneck speed, for caution 
was useless. They were in full view of 



AMBULANCIERS TO FRONT ^15 

scores of enemy gunners and their car at 
once became a target, being hit several 
times. Frosch drove on "without batting 
an eye," as the officers remarked. 

Over the unsafe bridge they rushed at 
top speed and, to the amazement of the 
watching Americans on the south bank, 
the structure held. Then the car tore up 
through Fismette to the dressing station, 
around which big shells were beating a 
terrible tattoo. The men hurriedly looked 
over the situation and then made a pre- 
concerted signal to the ambulanciers wait- 
ing on the other side of the river. 

When the signal was received, the ambu- 
lances came out from cover and dashed for 
the river. They were conspicuously deco- 
rated with the red cross, but that seemed 
only to make them U special target for the 
enemy. The machines were manned by 
James T. O'Neill, of Aldan, Pa. ; James R. 
Gunn, Joseph M. Murray, Samuel Falls, 
Alfred Baker, Originnes Biemuller, known 
among his comrades as "Mike," James R, 
Brown, Jack Curry, Harry Broadbent, Ray- 
mond Onyx and Albert Smith, all of 
Philadelphia, and John F. Maxwell, of 
Williamsport. 



216 THE IRON DIVISION 

On the trip into Fismette, the ambulances 
escaped a hit, miraculous as it may seem. 
They went around corners on two wheels, 
thundering and rushing through the narrow 
little streets littered with dust and debris, 
and came to a halt in the lee of the dress- 
ing station. Their crews leaped to the 
ground and set to work loading the 
wounded. 

The Hun artillerists and machine gun- 
ners vented all their varieties of hate on 
the gallant little group intent on an errand 
of mercy. It seemed as if the whole Ger- 
man army had determined they should not 
get their wounded back to Fismes. With 
more indifference to the fire than they felt 
for the clouds of flies which really annoyed 
them, the ambulance men worked quickly, 
smoothly and efficiently. 

O'Neill was sent back to see if the bridge 
still was standing. Instead of contenting 
himself with making sure of this from the 
brow of the river slope, he bethought him 
of a cache of medical supplies near the 
river and continued on foot to the spot, 
carrying back with him a burden of needed 
stores. Officers, watching the splendid exhi- 
bition of cast-iron nerve through their 



AMBULANCIERS TO FRONT 217 

glasses from the far side of the river, 
alternately cursed him for ''a blazing young 
fool" and blessed him for being "the kind 
of young fool that does things." . 

O'Neill reported that the bridge was 
still in place and at three o'clock in the morn- 
ing the first ambulance was loaded and 
sent away. Captain McGinnis went with 
it. The second ambulance left a few 
minutes later. Broadbent and Maxwell 
still were loading. O'Neill had made 
another trip to the river to see if the 
bridge was all right. 

The first two ambulances had just cleared 
the river when a shell landed fairly on the 
span and broke it through. O'Neill ran 
back to tell his comrades and as he arrived 
a big shell fell just outside the cellar. 
Broadbent was knocked down and deluged 
with earth at the entrance. He scrambled 
I back into the cellar at top speed, but one 
of the wounded men in the ambulance, 
supposed to be too badly hurt to walk, 
beat Broadbent into the shelter. 

One of the patients was wounded again 
in the leg and one of the ambulanciers held 
his hand over his cheek, where a screw 
from the side of the ambulance had been 



218 THE IRON DIVISION 

blown clear through. Three tires of the 
ambulance were punctured, the sides were 
perforated in a score of places and the 
roof was blown off by shell fragments. 

The patients were unloaded and carried 
back into the cellar to await a quieter 
moment. Repairs were made to the bridge 
and Captain McGinnis returned in a car 
and ordered the ambulances to get away. 
They started again at seven o'clock in the 
morning, but found the bridge again a 
mass of wreckage and had to return. 

At last, at four o'clock in the afternoon^ 
there came a lull in the enemy fire and 
two more of the ambulances began their 
perilous race across the river, the engineers 
having just completed the rebuilding of the 
bridge. For the second time they just 
cheated a big shell, which landed on the 
bridge immediately after the second car 
had crossed, and the structure was put out 
of service beyond hope of quick repair. 

Thereupon the ambulanciers remaining 
m the Fismette cellar calmly proceeded to 
carry the remaining wounded on litters 
down the hill through the German fire, 
under protection of a well-organized defense 
by our fighting men. They forded the 



AMBULANCIERS TO FRONT 219 

river, holding the Htters above their heads, 
while shells threw up waterspouts and 
bullets pattered like hail all about them. 

On the southern bank, ambulances stood 
out in the open, backed almost to the water's 
edge, their drivers smoking cigarettes and 
watching and calling advice to the men in 
the water. Thus the last of the wounded 
were taken from under the noses of the 
enemy. 

Captain McGinnis and most of the en- 
listed men whose names have been men- 
tioned were awarded Distinguished Service 
Crosses. Most of them had worked 
seventy -two hours and many had abso- 
lutely no rest for forty-eight hours. Ten 
of their thirteen ambulances were de- 
molished. 

In organizing a protective offense to 
cover the evacuation of the wounded, 
First Sergeant Thomas J. Cavanaugh, of 
Pittsburgh, a member of Company D, 
111th Infantry, distinguished himself in 
such a manner as to be awarded the Dis- 
tinguished Service Cross. 

With a small force of men, he captured a 
building in the outskirts of the village and 
organized it as a strong point. He then 



220 THE IRON DIVISION 

took a position himself at a street inter- 
section where, by stepping around the 
corner of the buildings one way, he was 
protected from enemy snipers and machine 
gunners, and by turning the corner, he 
was open to the fire sweeping in gusts 
down the road the ambulance men had to 
cover. Cavanaugh, when an ambulance 
was ready to move, stepped into the open, 
like Ajax defying the lightning. If the 
Germans were not firing heavily for the 
moment, he whistled a signal to the ambu- 
lance men that it was safe to go ahead. 

He was wounded by shrapnel, but refused 
to leave his post until he collapsed, an hour 
and a half after being struck. The next 
day, having had his wound treated, he 
insisted on resuming his position as a 
human target for the benefit of the ambu- 
lance men and their wounded. 

Captain Edmund W. Lynch, of Chester, 
commanding Company B, 111th Infantry, 
who was killed a short time later, and 
Lieutenant Edward S. Fitzgerald, of New 
York City, exposed themselves in the same 
manner and for the same self-sacrificing 
purpose at other important corners. 

And the fight for possession of Fismette 



AMBULANCIERS TO FRONT 221 

went forward ceaselessly. A daring and 
clever bit of work by a party of Pennsyl- 
vania machine gunners under Lieutenant 
Milford W. Fredenburg, of Ridgway, Pa., 
an officer of Company D, 112th Infantry, 
had a considerable influence on the final 
driving of the enemy from the town. The 
lieutenant led his gunners filtering through 
the German lines at night, like Indians, a 
man or two here, another there. They 
assembled beyond the town, took shelter 
in a wood and when the fighting was most 
furious the next day they were able to pour 
in a disconcerting fire on the rear of the 
German forces. 

Lieutenant Rippey L. Shearer, of Harris- 
burg, with men of Company G, 112th 
Infantry, crossed the river in water up to 
their necks, in which the shorter men had 
either to swim or be supported by the 
larger ones. They had the center of the 
advance and captured a building which 
had been used as a tannery and had been 
a German stronghold. It was a desperately 
brave, although costly, bit of work for 
which the Pennsylvanians were highly 
praised. 

Captain Fred L. McCoy, Grove City, 



222 THE IRON DIVISION 

Pa., commanding Company M, 112th In- 
fantry, held the left flank. He and his men 
fought their way down the river bank to 
where an old stone mansion, known as the 
Chateau Diable, had been a thorn in the 
side of the American attack. They stormed 
and captured the building, taking thirty 
machine guns, a large quantity of ammuni- 
tion and many prisoners. 

Captain Lucius M. Phelps, of Erie, Pa., 
commanding Company G, 112th, and Cap- 
tain Harry F. Miller, of Meadville, Pa., 
commanding Company B, of the same 
regiment, led their companies in an advance 
east of the tannery until they were 
ensconced behind stout stone walls, from 
where they were able to turn their guns on 
the enemy stubbornly clinging to the north- 
ern fringe of the village. 

The 103d Trench Mortar Battery, made 
up very largely of members of the old First 
City Troop of Philadelphia and representa- 
tive of many of the socially prominent 
families of that city, entered its first general 
action. Under command of Captain Ralph 
W. Knowles, of Philadelphia, the battery 
advanced with the infantry, lugging their 
Stokes mortars across the river and up the 



AMBULANCIERS TO FRONT 223 

hill. They set up their squat weapons and 
soon the deep-throated roars of the mortars 
hurling their immense bombs joined in the 
chorus that was beginning to sound the 
knell of German hopes of hanging onto any 
part of Fismette. 

West of Fismette, the broad Rheims- 
Rouen highway became, in the course of 
these operations north of the Vesle, an 
objective of commanding importance to the 
Americans for the purpose of breaking up 
lateral communications along the German 
line. Captain Arthur L. Schlosser, of 
Buffalo, N. Y., later killed, and Captain 
Robert S. Caine, of Pittsburgh, who went 
to France as lieutenants of Company G, 
111th Infantry, on their own initiative 
started a raid which developed into a 
successful attack and resulted in the 
capture of the highway where it crosses 
the Vesle. 

Captain Schlosser, who was almost a 
giant in size, carried a rifle himself and, 
instead of having his men advance in 
company formation, ^ed them filtering 
through the woods in Indian fashion. He 
captured two Maxim guns and killed the 
crews and he and Captain Caine and their 



2^24 THE IRON DIVISION 

men held their positions against connter- 
attaeks b^' the remnants of three German 
regiments. 

Not all the losses were confined to the 
attacking troops. The enemy artillery, 
continually shelling the back areas, took its 
sad toll of American life and limb. The 
103d Engineers, who had been performing 
prodigious work in their own line, suffered 
tlie loss of their second in command, 
Lieutenant-Colonel James J. Duffy, of 
Philadelphia. As he stepped into a side 
car in front of headquarters on the evening 
of August 17th to make a tour of the lines, a 
huge shell exploded immediately behind, 
killing him and the cycle driver instantly. 

Back on the hills south of Fismes, the 
Pennsylvania artillery all this time had 
been earning the right to rank in the Iron 
Division glory roll along with their dough- 
boy comrades. At one time, just as a 
battery had geared up to move and the 
men already were astride their horses, a 
big shell dropped plump upon the lead team 
of one of the guns. 

"Steady, men," called an officer, and the 
men sat their plunging, trembling horses as 
if on parade. It was an ideal time for a 



AMBULANCIERS TO FRONT 225 

costly stampede, but the conduct of the 
artillerymen prevented this and won the 
highest praise of officers and men of other 
units who saw the occurrence. 

Two men were killed and three severely 
wounded and two horses were blown to 
bits. The wheel driver trotted to a first 
aid station to get help for the wounded 
men, while the regiment went on. After 
delivering his message, the driver obtained 
a supply of powder and shells and went on 
the gallop to the battery position to deliver 
the ammunition. Then he said to men 
about him: 

''Now, if you fellows have all that stuff 
unloaded and one of you will help me down, 
I'll get you to tie a knot around this leg of 
mine." 

Only then was it discovered that he had 
been attending to other wounded men and 
the ammunition needs of the battery with 
a bad gash in his own leg from a shell 
fragment. 

Members of the headquarters companies 
of the artillery regiments maintained com- 
munications constantly, stringing telephone 
wires in the face of heavy enemy fire in 
almost impossible places. There was no 



226 THE IRON DIVISION 

thought of faihng. TMien some men died 
in an attempt, others promptly stepped 
into the breach to "carry on." 

Still the German guns from their hill- 
tops poured down their galling fire upon 
the American positions. Still the snipers 
and machine gunners hung on in Fismette 
and still the crossing of the Vesle under 
bombardment was so hazardous that an 
attack in force was impracticable. 

The fighting in the streets of the town 
swayed back and forth until August 28th. 
That day the Germans came down out of 
their hills in a roaring tide. They boiled 
into Fismette and drove the small force of 
Pennsylvanians back to the river, where an 
amazingly few men managed to hold a 
bridgehead on the northern bank, and the 
town once more was German territory. 

Then our gunners went systematically to 
work to level the place, for the high com- 
mand had lost all hope of taking it by 
infantry assault without an unworthy loss 
of brave men. 



CHAPTER XV 
A Martial Panorama 

BUT meanwhile great and portentous 
things had been happening elsewhere 
on the long battle line. Up in 
Flanders, the British troops, with American 
brigades fighting shoulder to shoulder with 
them, were driving the Germans eastward. 
Farther south, the French were hounding 
the fleeing Germans. And American forces 
around Soissons were pounding away in 
such a fashion as to make the positions 
along the Vesle untenable for their stub- 
born defenders. 

The enlisted men knew little or nothing 
of this and even the junior officers were sur- 
prised when word came back from patrols 
on the north of the river on September 4th, 
that they met almost no opposition from the 
enemy. Even his artillery fire had fallen 
off to a little desultorj^ shelling, so at once 
a general advance was ordered. 

Roads in the rear instantly became alive 
with motor trucks, big guns, columns of 

(227) 



228 THE IRON DIVISION 

men, wagon trains and all the countless 
activities of an army on the march. The 
sight of the main forces crossing the river 
was a wonderful one to the officers stand- 
ing on the hills overlooking the scene, and 
one that they never will forget. 

The long columns debouched from the 
wooded shelters, deployed into wide, thin 
lines and moved off down the slope into the 
narrow river valley. Below them lay the 
villages and towns of the Vesle, pounded 
almost to dust by the thousands of shells 
which had fallen upon them during the 
weeks the two armies contended for their 
possession. The men went down the hili 
exactly as they had done so often in war 
maneuvers and sham battles at training 
camps. Only an occasional burst of black 
smoke and a spouting geyser of earth and 
stones showed it was real warfare, although 
even that had been so well simulated in the 
training that, except that now and then a 
man or two dropped and either lay still or 
got up and limped slowly back up the hill, the 
whole thing might have been merely a drama 
of mimic warfare. Many of the officers 
who watched did, in fact, compare it with 
scenes they had witnessed in motion pictures. 



A MARTIAL PANORAMA 229 

Despite the occasional casualty, the line 
moved steadily forward. On reaching the 
river, there was little effort to converge at 
the hastily constructed bridges. Men who 
were close enough veered over to them, but 
the rest plunged into the water and either 
waded or swam across, according to the 
depth where they happened to be and the 
individual's ability to swim. 

Once on the north side, they started up 
the long slope as imperturbably as they had 
come dow^n the other side, although every 
man knew that when they reached the 
crest of the rise they would face the Ger- 
man machine gun fire from positions on the 
next ridge to the north. 

Without faltering an instant, the thin 
lines topped the rise and disappeared from 
the w^atchers to the south, and the fight was 
on again. The German machine gunners 
resisted and retired foot by foot, but the 
American advance was unfaltering. It 
had been freely predicted that the enemy 
would make a stand on the high plateau 
between the Vesle and the Aisne, but the 
pressure elsewhere on his line to the west 
and north precluded the possibility of this 
and he plunged on northward. 



230 THE IRON DIVISION 

The 109th Infantry made its crossing of 
the Vesle about two and a half miles east 
of Fismes, the regiment's position on the 
south of the river having been at Magneux. 
Its next objective point was Muscourt. 
The Germans confronting it had not retired 
so precipitately as those at Fismette and the 
regiment fought its way across the river 
and on northward, losing its third com- 
mander in the action. 

Colonel Samuel V. Ham, regular army 
officer, who had succeeded Colonel Coulter 
when he was wounded, led the firing line 
of the regiment across the river. He was 
so severely wounded that he was unable to 
move, but remained ten hours on the field 
looking after the welfare of his men. So 
conspicuous was his action that he was 
cited and awarded the Distinguished Ser- 
vice Cross, the official citation reading as 
follows: 

"For extraordinary heroism in action 
near Magneux, France, September 6, 1918. 
By courageously leading his firing line in 
the advance across the Vesle River from 
Magneux toward Muscourt, Colonel Ham 
exemplified the greatest heroism and truest 
leadership, instilling in his men confidence 



A MARTIAL PANORAMA 231 

in their undertaking. Having been severely 
wounded and unable to move, he remained 
ten hours on the field of battle, directing 
the attack, and refused to leave or receive 
medical attention until his men had been 
cared for." 

The Pennsylvania regiments came onto 
the high ground, from which the lowlands 
to the north were spread out before them 
like a panorama, and in the misty distance, 
fifteen miles away, they could descry the 
towers of the Cathedral at Laon. This 
was, in a sense, the Allied promised land. 
It was defiled and invaded France and, 
furthermore, Laon, since 1914 had been 
the pivot of the German line, the bastion 
upon which the great front made its turn 
from north and south to east and west. 

The five miles of hill, plateau and valley 
lying between the Vesle and the Aisne 
were not crossed with impunity. It was on 
the Aisne plateau that another company of 
the 109th wrote its name high on the scroll 
of honor. 

A small wood below the village of Villers- 
en-Prayeres obstructed the advance of the 
regiment. It had been strongly organized 
by the Germans and was fairly alive with 



232 THE IRON DIVISION 

Boclie machine gunners and snipers. Com- 
pany G, of the old First, was ordered to 
dispose of it. The orders were carried out 
in what the official communique of the next 
day referred to as a "small but brilliant 
operation." Considering the small extent 
of the action and the fact that it was but 
an incident of the whole battle, the fact 
that it was mentioned at all in the official 
reports speaks volumes for the men who 
carried it out. 

The glory and distinction were won at a 
bitter cost. Company G, after the fight 
was over, ranked side by side with Com- 
panies L and M of the same regiment and 
B and C of the 110th for their splendid 
stand and hesLvy losses south of the Marne. 
There were 125 casualties in the company 
of 260 men. Included among them were 
Sergeant Frederick E. Bauer, Sergeant 
Graham McConnell, Corporal Thomas S. B. 
Horn, Private Charles A. Knapp, all of 
Philadelphia, and Sergeant John H. Win- 
throp, D. S. C, of Bryn Mawr, killed, and 
Lieutenant Harold A. Fahr and Sergeant 
Earl Prentzel, both of Willow Grove, Pa.; 
Corporal Theodore G. Smythe, Bugler How- 
ard W. Munder, Privates Gus A. Faulkner, 



A MARTIAL PANORAMA 233 

Charles Quenzer, Thomas Biddle, Robert 
C. Dilks, Frederick C. Glenn, Charles 
Lohmiller and Bernard Horan, all of Phila- 
delphia, wounded. 

Private Paul Helsel, of Doylestown, Pa., 
a member of the same company, came out 
of the battle with six bullet holes through 
his shirt, two through his breeches, the 
bayonet of his rifle shot away and a bullet 
embedded in the first aid packet carried on 
his hip, but without a scratch on his person. 

The Americans were subjected at times 
to a heavy artillery fire, especially while 
crossing the plateau. For about two miles 
it was necessary for them to advance in 
the open on high ground, plainly visible to 
German observers. There was little cover, 
and both heavy and light artillery swept 
the zone, but with slight effect and without 
checking to any degree the forward move- 
ment. 

The advance of the Americans over the 
plateau was effected without material loss 
because, instead of advancing in regular 
formations, they were filtered into and 
through the zone, never presenting a satis- 
factory target. 

The German stand on the Vesle had 



234 THE IRON DIVISION 

enabled them to remove the bulk of the 
supplies they had accumulated there and 
what they could not remove they burned. 
Vast fires, sending up clouds of smoke in 
the distance, marked where ammunition 
dumps and other stocks of supplies were 
being destroyed that they might not fall 
into the hands of the Americans. Thus it 
was that the progress from the Vesle pre- 
sented a different aspect from that between 
the Marne and the Vesle, where the way 
had been impeded in places by the unimag- 
inable quantities of supplies of every con- 
ceivable kind the Hun had abandoned in 
his flight. 

By September 10th, the pursuit had come 
to an end, as far as the Iron Division was 
concerned. The Americans and French 
were on the Aisne and the enemy again was 
snarling defiance across a water barrier. 

The artillery regiments followed the in- 
fantry as far as the high ground between 
the rivers and there took position to blast 
the Huns away from the Aisne and send 
them rolling along to their next line, the 
ancient and historic Chemin-des-Dames, 
or Road of Women. 

Battery C, 107th Artillery, of Phoenix- 



A MARTIAL PANORAMA 235 

ville, commanded by Captain Samuel A. 
Wliitaker, of that town, a nephew of former 
Governor Samuel W. Pennypacker, was the 
first of the Pennsylvania big gun units to 
cross the Vesle. 

On the night of September 10th, the 107th 
was relieved by the 221st French Artillery 
Regiment, near the town of Blanzy-les- 
Fismes. The French used the Americans' 
horses in moving into positions. They dis- 
covered they had taken a wrong road in 
moving up and just as they turned back the 
Germans, who apparently had learned the 
hour of the relief, laid down a heayy bar- 
rage. A terrible toll was taken of the 
French regiment. 

Lieutenant John Muckel, of the Phoenix- 
viile battery, with a detail of men, had 
remained with the French regiment to 
show them the battery position and bring 
back the horses. When the barrage fell. 
Lieutenant Muckel was thrown twenty- 
five feet by the explosion of a high-explosive 
shell, and landed plump in the mangled 
remains of two horses. All about him were 
the moans and cries of the wounded and 
dying Frenchmen. He had been so shocked 
by the shell explosion close to him that he 



236 THE IRON DIVISION 

could move only with difficulty and extreme 
pain. He was barely conscious, alone in 
the dark and lost, for the regiment had 
gone on and his detachment of Americans 
was scattered. 

Lieutenant Muckel, realizing he must do 
something, dragged himself until he came 
to the outskirts of a village he learned later 
was Villet. Half dazed, he crawled to the 
wall of a building and pulled himself to 
his feet. He w^as leaning against the wall, 
trying to collect his scattered senses, when a 
shell struck the building and demolished it. 

The Lieutenant was half buried in the 
debris. While he lay there, fully expecting 
never again to rejoin his battery. Sergeant 
Nunner, of the battery, came along on 
horseback and heard the officer call. The 
Sergeant wanted the Lieutenant to take 
his horse and get away. The Lieutenant 
refused and ordered the Sergeant to go and 
save himself. The Sergeant defied the 
Lieutenant, refusing to obey and announc- 
ing that he would remain with the officer if 
the latter would not get away on the 
horse. At last they compromised, when 
the Lieutenant had recovered somewhat, 
by the Sergeant's riding the horse and the 



A MARTIAL PANORAMA 237 

Lieutenant's assisting himself by holding 
to the animal's tail. In this way they 
caught up with the battery. 

Having reached the Aisne, the Twenty- 
eight Division now was relieved and ordered 
back to a rest camp, which they sadly 
needed, after about sixty days of almost 
unremitting night and day fighting for the 
infantry and approximately a month of 
stirring action for the artillery. 

Thoroughly exhausted, but serene in the 
knowledge of a task well and gloriously 
performed, their laurels thick upon them 
and securely in possession of the manfully 
earned title, ''The Iron Division," what 
was left of our Pennsylvania men turned 
their backs upon the scene of action and 
prepared to enjoy a well-earned period of 
repose and recreation. 

It was not to be, however. Disappoint- 
ments, of which they had been the prey 
for more than a year, dogged their foot- 
steps. While on the road, moving toward 
a rest camp as fast as they could travel, 
orders reached the division to proceed 
eastward to where General Pershing had 
begun to assemble the American forces 
into the First American Army. The emer- 



238 THE IRON DIVISION 

gency which had led to the use of American 
brigades under French and British higher 
command had passed and America at last 
was to have its own army under its own 
high command, subject only to the supreme 
Allied commander, Marshal Ferdinand 
Foch. 

The men in the ranks were keenly alive 
to the fact that they were headed for a 
rest camp, and when their route and general 
direction were changed overnight and they 
set off the next day at right angles to the 
course they had been traveling, they knew 
something else was in store for the division. 
Not an officer or man, however, had an 
inkling of what time only brought forth — 
that the thing they were about to do was 
immeasurably greater, more glorious and 
more difficult than that which they had 
accomplished. 

Grumbling among themselves, after the 
true soldier fashion when not too busily 
engaged otherwise, the men found some 
compensation in the knowledge that their 
herculean efforts of the past weeks were 
understood and acknowledged by the higher 
authorities. They cherished with open 
pride a general order issued by Major- 



A MARTIAL PANORAMA 239 

General Charles H. Muir, the division com- 
mander. It was of special significance 
because he is a regular army officer, not a 
Pennsylvanian, and therefore not imbued 
with local or state pride, and also because 
before the war the National Guard was 
held in huge contempt by the average 
regular army officer. Here is what General 
Muir's general order told the men: 

"The division commander is authorized 
to inform all, from the lowest to the highest, 
that their efforts are known and appreciated. 
A new division, by force of circumstances, 
took its place in the front line in one of the 
greatest battles of the greatest war in 
history. 

"The division has acquitted itself in a 
creditable manner. It has stormed and 
taken points that were regarded as proof 
against assault. It has taken numerous 
prisoners from a vaunted Guards division 
of the enemy. 

"It has inflicted on the enemy far more 
loss than it has suffered from him. In a 
single gas application, it inflicted more 
damage than the enemy inflicted on it by 
gas since its entry into battle. 

" It is desired that these facts be brought 



240 THE IRON DIVISION 

to the attention of all, in order that the 
tendency of new troops to allow their 
minds to dwell on their own losses, to the 
exclusion of what they have done to the 
enemy, may be reduced to the minimum. 

"Let all be of good heart! We have 
inflicted more loss than we have suffered; 
we are better men individually than our 
enemies. . A little more grit, a little more 
effort, a little more determination to keep 
our enemies down, and the division will have 
the right to look upon itself as an organiza- 
tion of veterans." 



CHAPTER XVI 

In the Argonne 

SO AWAY they went to the southeast 
and came to a halt in the vicinity 
of Revigny, just south of the 
Argonne Forest and about a mile and a 
haK north of the Rhine-Marne Canal. 
Here they found replacement detachments 
awaiting them and once more the sadly 
depleted ranks were filled. 

The division was under orders to put in 
ten days at hard drilling there. This is the 
military idea of rest for soldiers, and 
experience has proved it a pretty good sys- 
tem, although it never will meet the 
approval of the man in the ranks. It has 
the advantage of keeping his mind off what 
he has passed through, keeping him occupied 
and maintaining his discipline and morale. 
The best troops will go stale through 
neglect of drill during a campaign, and drill 
and discipline are almost synonymous. As 
undisciplined troops are worse than useless 
in battle, the necessity of occasional periods 

16 . (241) 



242 THE IRON DIVISION 

of drill, distasteful though they may be to 
the soldier, is obvious. 

"A day in a rest camp is about as bad as 
a day in battle," is not an uncommon 
expression from the men, although, as is 
always the case with soldiers, they appre- 
ciate a change of any kind. 

This rest camp and its drills were not 
destined to become monotonous, however, 
for instead of ten days they had but one 
day. Orders came from "G. H. Q.," which 
is soldier parlance for General Head- 
quarters, for the division to proceed almost 
directly north, into the Argonne. This 
meant more hard hiking and more rough 
traveling for horses and motor trucks until 
the units again were "bedded down" 
temporarily, with division headquarters at 
Les Islettes, twenty miles due north from 
Revigny, and eight miles south of what was 
then, and had been for many weary months, 
the front line. 

The doughboys knew that something big 
was impending. They had come to 
believe that 'Tershing wouldn't have the 
Twenty-eighth Division around unless he 
was going to pull off something big." 
They felt more at home than they had since 



IN THE ARGONNE 243 

leaving America. All about them they 
saw nothing but American soldiers, and 
thousands upon thousands of them. The 
country seemed teeming with them. Every 
branch of the service was in American 
hands, the first time the Pennsylvanians 
had seen such an organization of their 
very own — ^the first time anybody ever did, 
in fact, for it was the biggest American 
army ever assembled. 

Infantry, artillery, engineers, the supply 
services, tanks, the air service, medical 
service, the high command and the staff, 
all were American. It was a proud day 
for the doughboys when showers of leaflets 
dropped from a squadron of airplanes flying 
over one day and they read on the printed 
pages a pledge from American airmen to 
co-operate with the American fighting men 
on the ground to the limit of their ability 
and asked similar co-operation from the 
foot soldiers. 

"Your signals enable us to take the 
news of your location to the rear, " read the 
communication, "to report if the attack is 
successful, to call for help if needed, to 
enable the artillery to put their shells over 
your heads into the enemy. If you are 



244 THE IRON DIVISION 

out of ammunition and tell us, we will 
report and have it sent up. If you are sur- 
rounded, we will deliver the ammunition 
by airplane. We do not hike through the 
mud with you, but there are discomforts in 
our work as bad as mud, but we won't let 
rain, storms, Archies (anti-aircraft guns) 
nor Boche planes prevent our getting there 
with the goods. Use us to the limit. 
After reading this, hand it to your buddie 
and remember to show your signals." It 
was signed: "Your Aviators." 

*'You bet we will, all of that," was the 
heartfelt comment of the soldiers. Such 
was the splendid spirit of co-operation 
built up by General Pershing among the 
branches of the service. 

To this great American army was 
assigned the tremendous task of striking 
at the enemy's vitals, striking where it was 
known he would defend himself most pas- 
sionately. The German defensive lines 
converged toward a point in the east like 
the ribs of a fan, drawing close to protect 
the Mezieres-Longuyon railroad shuttle, 
which was the vital artery of Germany in 
occupied territory. If the Americans could 
force a break through in the Argqnne, the 



IN THE ARGONNE 245 

whole tottering German machine in France 
would crumble. Whether they broke 
through or not, the smallest possible result 
of an advance there would be the narrowing 
of the bottle-neck of the German transport 
lines into Germany and a slow strangling 
of the invading forces. 

After the first tempestuous rush, there 
was no swift movement. The Yanks gnawed 
their way to the vaunted Kriemhilde line, 
hacked and hewed their way through it, 
overcoming thousands of machine guns, 
beset by every form of Hun pestilence. 
Even conquered ground they found treach- 
erous. The Germans had planted huge 
mines of which the fuses were acid, timed 
to eat through a container days after the 
Germans had gone and touch off the 
explosive charge to send scores of Americans 
to hospitals or to soldiers' graves. 

To the Americans, not bursting fresh into 
battle as they had done at Chateau-Thierry, 
but sated and seasoned by a long summer of 
campaigning, fell the tough, unspectacular 
problem of the whole western front. 
While the world hung spellbound on the 
Franco-British successes in the west and 
north, with their great bounds forward 



246 THE IRON DIVISION 

after the retreating Germans, relatively 
little attention was paid to the action 
northwest of Verdun, and not until the 
close of hostilities did America begin to 
awaken to the fact that it was precisely 
this slow, solid pounding, this bulldog 
pertinacity of the Americans that had made 
possible that startling withdrawal in the 
north. 

So vital was this action in the Argonne 
that the best divisions the German high 
command could muster were sent there and, 
once there, were chewed to bits by the 
American machine, thus making possible 
the rapid advances of the Allies on other 
parts of the long front. 

The Pennsylvania men looked back 
almost longingly to what they had regarded 
at the time as hard, rough days along the 
Marne, the Ourcq and the Vesle. In per- 
spective, and from the midst of the Argonne 
fighting, it looked almost like child's play. 
Back home over the cables came the simple 
announcement that a certain position had 
been taken. Followers of the war news 
got out their maps and observed that this 
marked an advance of but a mile or so in 
three or four days and more than one 



IN THE ARGONNE 247 

asked: "What is wrong with Pershing's 
men?" It was difficult to understand why 
the men who had leaped forward so magnifi- 
cently from the Marne to the Aisne, travel- 
ing many miles in a day, should now be so 
slow, while their co-belligerents of the other 
nations were advancing steadily and rapidly. 

A very few minutes spent with any man 
who was in the Argonne ought to suffice as 
an answer. Soldiers who were in the St. 
Mihiel thrust and also in the Argonne 
coined an epigram. It was: "A meter in 
the Argonne is worth a mile at St. Miliiel." 
The cable message of a few words nearly 
always covered many hours, sometimes 
days, of heroic endeavor, hard, backbreak- 
ing labor, heart-straining hardship and the 
expenditure of boundless nervous energy 
with lavish hand, to. say nothing of what it 
meant to the hospital forces behind the 
lines and to the burial details. 

September 24th, division headquarters 
of the Twenty-eighth moved up to a point 
less than two miles back of the front lines, 
occupying old, long-abandoned French dug- 
outs. That evening Major-General Charles 
H. Muir, the division commander, appeared 
unexpectedly in the lines and walked about 



248 THE IRON DIVISION 

for some time, observing the disposition 
of the troops. He was watched with wide- 
eyed but respectful curiosity by many of 
the men, for the average soldier in the 
ranks knows as little of a division com- 
mander as of the Grand Llama of Tibet. 
Frequently he cares as little, too. 

The General cast a contemplative eye 
aloft, to where countless squirrels frolicked 
among the foliage of the great old trees, 
chattering in wild indignation at the dis- 
turbers of their peace, and birds sang their 
evensong upon the branches. 

The Iron Division now was completely 
assembled, functioning smoothly and effi- 
ciently, every unit working as a cog in the 
one great wheel. The artillery brigade, 
which had made its bow to modern warfare 
in the Vesle region, was established on the 
line well to the rear of the infantry. It 
had rushed at top speed from the Aisne 
plateau, making some record hikes. The 
guns were moved only by night and each 
day the weapons were camouflaged, usually 
in a friendly patch of woods. One night 
they made thirty miles, which is covering 
ground rapidly, even under the most fav- 
orable circumstances, for an organization 



IN THE ARGONNE 249 

with the impedimenta of an artillery 
brigade. 

There were times, in those long night 
marches, when the little natural light from 
a moonless sky was blotted out by woods 
through which the roads passed, and the 
artillerymen moved forward in absolute 
blackness. To have a light of any kind was 
dangerous, because of the frequent night 
forays by enemy flyers, and therefore for- 
bidden. Patrols went along in advance to 
"feel" the road, and the men with the guns 
and caissons followed by keeping their 
eyes on the ghostly radiance from illumi- 
nated wrist watches worn by officers with 
the advance patrols. 

When it came to the work of placing the 
guns for the preparatory bombardment of 
the offensive, the position assigned the 
Pennsylvania regiments was in a forest so 
dense that to get an area of fire at all, they 
had to fell the trees before them. But con- 
cealment of battery positions in a surprise 
attack is a vital consideration, and to have 
cut down hundreds of trees would have 
been an open advertisement to enemy 
observation planes of the location of the 
batteries. 



250 THE IRON DIVISION 

To overcome this difficulty, the trees 
which it was necessary to remove were 
sawed almost through and wired up to 
others, which were untouched, in order to 
keep them standing to the last moment. 
In order to get their field of fire, it was neces- 
sary for the men of some batteries to cut 
and wire as many as a hundred trees. In 
this way everything was prepared for the 
opening of the bombardment save the 
actual felling of the trees, and not the 
keenest eye nor the finest camera among 
the Boche aviators could detect a change 
in the character of the forest. 

At dusk on the night of Wednesday, 
September 25th, the artillerymen cut the 
wires holding the trees with axes and 
pulled the monarchs of the forest crashing 
to the ground to left and right of the path 
thus opened up, leaving the way clear for 
the artillery fire. A total of more than a 
thousand trees were felled in this way for 
the three regiments. 



CHAPTER XVII 

Million Dollar Barrage 

^T ELEVEN o'clock that night, Septem- 

/A ber 25th, a signal gun barked far 

-^ -^ down the line. The gunners of every 

battery were at their posts, lanyards in 

hand, and on the instant they pulled. 

That has become known in the army as 
'*the million dollar barrage," because en- 
listed men figured it must have cost at 
least that much. Whatever it cost, no 
man in that great army ever had heard the 
like. It ranged from the smaller field 
pieces up to great naval guns firing shells 
sixteen inches in diameter, with every 
variety and size of big gun in the American 
army in between. There had been talk 
in the war of a bombardment "reaching 
the intensity of drum fire." No drums 
the world ever has heard could have pro- 
vided a name for that bombardment. It 
was overwhelming in the immensity of 
its sound, as well as in its effect. There 
were 3,000 guns on the whole front. 

(251) 



252 THE IRON DIVISION 

Toward morning, the twelve ugly, 
snub-nosed weapons of the 103d Trench 
Mortar Battery, under Captain Ralph W. 
Knowles, of Philadelphia, added their heavy 
coughing to the monstrous serenade which 
rent the night. They were in position well 
up to the front, and their great bombs were 
designed to cut paths through the enemy 
barbed wire and other barriers so the 
infantry could go forward with as little 
trouble as possible. 

Zero hour for the infantry was 5.30 
o'clock on that morning of September 26th. 
Watches of officers and non-commissioned 
officers had been carefully adjusted to the 
second the night before and when the 
moment arrived, the long lines went over 
the top without further notice. 

The former National Guard of Penn- 
sylvania was but one division among a 
great many in that attack, which covered a 
front of fifty-four miles from the Meuse clear 
over into the Champagne and which linked 
up there with the rest of the whole flaming 
western front. The American army alone 
covered twenty miles of attacking front, 
and beyond them extended General Gour- 
ard's French army to the west. 



MILLION DOLLAR BARRAGE 253 

The full effect and result of the artillery 
preparation was realized only when the 
infantry went over the top. The early 
stages of the advance were described by 
observers as being more like a football 
game than a battle. The route was vir- 
tually clear of prepared obstructions, 
although there was hardly a stretch of six 
feet of level ground, and the German opposi- 
tion was almost paralyzed. 

The whole field of the forward movement 
was so pitted with shell craters as to make 
the going almost like mountain climbing. 
Over this field a part of the great battle 
of Verdun in 1916 had been fought and 
the pits scooped out by the artillery of that 
time, added to those due to the constant 
minor fire since, lay so close together that 
it was utterly impossible for all the men to 
make their way between. The craters left 
from the Verdun battle could be dis- 
tinguished by the fact that their sides were 
covered with grass and that once in a 
while a few bones were to be seen, melan- 
choly reminder of the brave men who died 
there. 

Seen from observation posts in the rear, 
the advancing soldiers presented an odd 



254 THE IRON DIVISION 

picture, dropping suddenly from view as 
they went into a hole, then reappearing, 
clambering up the far side. They jumped 
over the edges, often into a pool of stag- 
nant water with a bottom of slimy mud, 
and the climbing out was no easy task, 
burdened as they were with equipment. 

It was now the season of the year when 
the days are still fairly warm, but the 
nights are keen and frosty. The men 
started out in the chill of the morning with 
their slickers, but as the day advanced they 
began to feel these an unbearable impedi- 
ment in the heat and rush of battle and 
they discarded them. When night came 
they bitterly cursed their folly, for they 
were wretched with the cold. 

The early morning was gray and for- 
bidding. A heavy mist covered the land, 
hampering the air force in their work of 
observation, but overhead the sky was 
clear, giving promise of better visibility 
when the sun should heat the atmosphere 
and drive the mists away. 

The infantry, with machine gunners in 
close support, went forward rapidly. They 
came to the first German trench line and 
crossed it almost without opposition. A 



MILLION DOLLAR BARRAGE ^55 

surprising number of Germans emerged 
from dugouts, hands up, and inquired 
directions to the prison cages in the Ameri- 
can rear. The Pennsylvanians were just 
beginning to feel the effect of the loss of 
morale in the enemy army. 

To the surprise of our doughboys, the 
artillery opposing them was weak and 
ineffectual. To this fact is attributed the 
great number of what are known as "clean" 
wounds in the Argonne fight — ^bullet wounds 
which make a clean hole and heal quickly. 
In view of the great number of men struck 
during this campaign, it is extremely for- 
tunate that this was so. Had the German 
artillery been anything like what it had 
been in other battles, our casualty lists 
would have been much more terrible, for 
it is the shrapnel and big shells that tear 
men to pieces. 

Beyond the first German line, which w^as 
just south of Grand Boureuilles and Petite 
Boureuilles, on opposite sides of the Aire 
river, the German defenses had not been so 
thoroughly destroyed and the resistance 
began to stiffen. Out from their shelters, 
as soon as the American barrage had passed 
them, came hordes of Germans to man their 



25Q THE IRON DIVISION 

concealed machine gun nests. The lessons 
of the Marne-Aisne drive had been well 
learned by the Pennsylvanians, and there 
were few frontal assaults on these strong 
points, many of which were the famous 
concrete "pill boxes" — Wholes in the earth 
roofed over with rounded concrete and 
concealed by foliage and branches, with 
narrow slits a few inches above the surface 
of the earth to permit the guns to be sighted 
and fired. 

When the infantry came to one of these 
that spat flame and steel in such volume 
that a direct attack threatened to be 
extremely costly, they passed around it 
through the woods on either flank and left 
it to be handled by the forces coming up 
immediately in their rear, with trench mor- 
tars and one-pounder cannon, capable of 
demolishing the concrete structures. 

The infantiy passed beyond the area in 
which the artillery and trench mortars 
had wiped out the barbed wire and ran 
into much difiiculty with the astounding 
network of this defensive material woven 
through the trees. The Germans had 
boasted that the Argonne forest was a 
wooded fortress that never could be taken. 



MILLION DOLLAR BARRAGE 257 

American troops proved the vanity of that 
boast, but they went through an inferno 
to do it. The wire was a maze, laced 
through the forest from tree to tree, so 
that hours were consumed in covering 
ground which, but for the wire, could have 
been covered in almost as many minutes. 
The men had literally to cut and hack 
their way through yard after yard. 

The towns of Boureuilles, great and small, 
were cleaned up after smart fighting, and 
the advance w^as continued up the beauti- 
ful Aire River valley in the direction of 
Varennes. 

The Pennsylvania infantry was advanc- 
ing in two columns. The 55th Brigade, 
including the 109th and 110th Infantry 
regiments, was right along the river, and 
the 56th Brigade, made up of the 111th 
and 112th, went through the forest on the 
left, or west of the river. On the right of 
the Twenty-eighth Division was the Thir- 
tieth Division, consisting of National Guard 
troops of North and South Carolina and 
Tennessee, and on the left was the Seventy- 
seventh Division, selected men from New 
York State. 

The town of Varennes stands in a bowl- 

17 



258 THE IRON DIVISION 

shaped valley, rich in historic significance 
and, at the time our men reached there, 
gorgeous in the autumnal colorings of the 
trees. It was at Varennes that Louis XVI 
was captured when he attempted to escape 
from France. 

Coming up from the south to the high 
ground surrounding Varennes, the Iron 
Division forged ahead faster than the troops 
on their right could move through the 
forest. Before the officers and men of the 
liaison service could apprise the Pennsyl- 
vania commanders of this fact, they dis- 
covered it for themselves when a hot fire 
was poured in on their flank from German 
"pill boxes" and other strong points. 

It was decided, since the troops were roll- 
ing onward in fine style, not to halt the 
division while the other division caught up, 
so Major Thompson was sent off to the 
east with a battalion of the 110th to look 
after that flanking fire. The battalion 
disappeared into the woods, and in a little 
while a sharp increase in the sound of the 
firing from that direction indicated that it 
was hard at work. After some time it 
came back into its position in the line. The 
other division had easier going for a time 



MILLION DOLLAR BARRAGE 259 

as a result of the efforts of the four com- 
panies of Pennsylvanians, and the embar- 
rassing fire from the right flank was 
silenced. 

After a number of the German "pill 
boxes" had been reduced and entered by 
the Pennsylvania troops, it was discovered 
that they were, like so many other German 
contrivances and devices of the war, largely 
bluff. In instance after instance, where the 
intensity of the fire from these places had 
led our men to expect a garrison of a dozen 
men they found only one. The retreating 
Germans had left a single soldier with a 
large supply of rifles to give the impression 
of a considerable force manning the fort. 
Prisoners said their instructions had been 
to fire as rapidly as possible and as long as 
possible and to die fighting, without thought 
of surrender. 

When the Pennsylvanians forced their 
way to the lower crest of the ridge looking 
down into the valley where Varennes lies, 
the edge of the Argonne forest to the west- 
ward still was occupied by enemy machine 
gunners. Officers of the division stepped 
out from the shelter of trees and looked over 
the ground with their glasses to plan the 



260 THE IRON DIVISION 

next phase of the attack. German snipers 
promptly sighted them and in a moment 
bullets were singing through the trees 
above their heads and to both sides, but 
they remained unperturbed. 

" Get me an idea of what is over in that 
wood/* said General Muir to his aides, and 
Lieutenant Raymond A. Brown, of Mead- 
ville. Pa., and Captain William B. Morgan, 
of Beverly, Mass., started out on the risky 
mission. Lieutenant Brown's pistol was 
packed in his blanket roll. He borrowed a 
rifle and a cartridge belt from a private 
soldier. Three hours later they returned 
and made reports upon which were based 
the next actions of the troops. They told 
nothing of their experiences, but Lieutenant 
Brown had added a German wrist watch to 
his equipment and Captain Morgan showed 
a pair of shoulder straps which indicated 
that the troops opposing them were 
Brandenburgers. 

As they went down the far side of the 
hill toward Varennes, the Pennsylvania sol- 
diers saw an amazing evidence of German 
industry. The whole slope was pains- 
takingly terraced and furnished with dug- 
outs in tiers, leading off the terraces. The 



MILLION DOLLAR BARRAGE 261 

shelters of the officers were fitted out with 
attractive porticos and arbors. 

As evidence of the hurried retreat of the 
Huns, who apparently had not dreamed the 
Americans could advance so swiftly through 
their leafy fortress, a luncheon, untouched, 
lay upon a table in an officer's dugout. At 
the head of the table was an unopened 
letter. 

In another dugout was an upright piano, 
which must have been looted from the 
town and lugged up the hill at the cost of 
great labor. But, most astonishing of all, 
upon the piano was sheet music published 
in New York, as shown by the publisher's 
name, long after America entered the war. 
Our officers puzzled long over how the 
music could have got there, but found no 
solution. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

"An Enviable Reputation" 

VARENNES itself was virtually a 
wreck by the time our men reached 
it. Most of the buildings were cut 
off about the second story by shell fire. 
An electric plant, installed by the Germans 
and which they had attempted to wreck 
before leaving, was repaired by Pennsyl- 
vania mechanics and soon was ready to 
furnish illumination for the Americans. 

Crates of live rabbits, left behind by the 
Germans in their flight, were found by the 
Pennsylvanians and turned over to the 
supply officers, and in the evening an 
officers' mess sat down to a stewed rabbit 
dinner in the open square of the ruined 
town, in the shadow of the gaping sides of 
the wrecked church. In addition to the 
army ration issue, the meal and others for 
some days were helped out by a plentiful 
supply of cabbage, radishes, potatoes, cauli- 
flower, turnips and other vegetables, taken 
from the pretty little gardens which the 

(262) 



"AN ENVIABLE REPUTATION" 263 

Germans had planted and carefully nur- 
tured. 

While the Pennsylvanians were at 
Varennes, a great automobile came roaring 
down the hill from the south and slithered 
to a halt where a group of our soldiers had 
been lolling on the ground resting. They 
were not there by the time the car stopped. 
Instead, they were erect and soldierly, 
every man at attention and hands jerked 
up to the salute with sharp precision. 
For the flag upon the car bore four 
stars and it w^as all the men could do 
to keep from rude "gaping" at the tall, 
handsome man inside, who called to them 
pleasantly: 

"What division is this.?" 

Most of the men were tongue-tied with 
surprise and embarrassment, but one 
responded : 

"The Twenty-eighth, sir." 

" Ah ! You have an enviable reputation," 
was the reply from the man in the car. 
"I should like to lunch with your division 
today." 

Wliich he thereupon proceeded to do. 
As the car passed on, a group of very 
red-faced private soldiers looked each other 



264 THE IRON DIVISION 

in the eye in a startled way and one voiced 
the thought of all when he said : 

"And that was General Pershing! And 
he spoke to us! Gee!" 

The 103d Engineers again were covering 
themselves with glory in this Argonne drive. 
Time after time they were sent out to 
repair existing roads and construct new 
ones, often working right on the heels of 
the infantry, for only after they had per- 
formed their work could supplies be brought 
up to the fighting troops and the artillery 
maintain position to continue the barrage in 
advance of the infantry and machine gunners. 

The 103d Supply Train, too, performed 
its work under incredible difficulties. 
Doughboys rarely thought to give a word 
of praise to the men of the big camions. 
More often their comment was: "Gee! 
Pretty soft for you fellows, riding around 
in a high-powered truck while we slog 
through the mud!" 

But to those who knew of the trying 
night drives in utter darkness over roads 
which not only were torn to tatters already 
by shells, but which were subject at any 
time to renewed shelling; of the long 
stretches without sleep or food or drink; 



^'AN ENVIABLE REPUTATION" 265 

of the struggles with motors and other 
parts of the trucks which fell heir to every 
kind of trouble such things are liable to 
under great stress — only to that under- 
standing few, and to the supply chaps 
themselves, were their activities regarded 
as subject for praiseful comment. Had 
the supply train "fallen down on the 
job" and "chow" not been ready at every 
opportunity — ^which truly were few and far 
enough between — Oh, then the doughboys 
would have howled in execration at their 
brothers of the big lorries. 

The same kind of credit was due as 
much and given as rarely to the 103d 
Ammunition Train, which kept all the 
fighting men supplied without stint and 
without break with the necessary powder 
and steel to keep the Hun on the run. 

Even the men of the four field hospitals 
found themselves nearer the front than 
such organizations usually go. So well 
had the plans been laid for that opening 
assault that it was realized the hospitals 
would have to be well forward to avoid 
too long a carry for the wounded after the 
first rush had carried our men well beyond 
their "jumping-off-place." 



^66 THE IRON DIVISION 

The hospitals took position during the 
night and erected their tents, so they 
would not be subject to air bombing before 
the attack and so their presence would not 
betray the concentration of forces. French 
oflBcers who passed along the American 
front inspecting it the night before the 
assault were amazed at this concentration, 
and so were the jBeld hospital men when the 
bombardment was started and they found 
themselves far ahead of the big guns. 
In the morning they discovered, to their 
astonishment, that they had been thrust 
in between the first line of infantry and 
the support. 

Throughout the Argonne fighting, as 
they had done from the beginning of the 
division's activities, they performed their 
work in as thorough and capable a manner 
as did any of the organizations in the 
division, and found their chief recompense 
in the gratitude of the wounded and suffer- 
ing who passed through their hands. 

As the two Pennsylvania columns bat- 
tered their way forward, a double liaison 
service was maintained between them, first 
by patrols of men and second by telephone 
communication. The service of communi- 



"AN ENVIABLE REPUTATION" 267 

cation was presided over by Colonel Walter 
C. Sweeney, chief of the divisional staff, 
originally a Philadelphian, but now hailing 
from Virginia. 

The circuit of communication was not 
broken once, largely because of the alertness 
and ability of Lieutenant-Colonel Sydney 
A. Hagerling, of Pittsburgh, the divi- 
sional signal officer, and the staunch, untir- 
ing and eflScient work of the 103d Field 
Signal Battalion. Each brigade com- 
mander knew always precisely how far the 
other had advanced. Both regular army 
men, they united in giving full credit for 
the remarkably successful advance to the 
high quality of the troops, the superb 
handling of the artillery by Brigadier- 
General Price and the unexcelled team- 
work of officers and men of each branch 
of the service and of branch with branch. 

At one time, emphasizing this remarkable 
spirit within the division, Major-General 
Muir appeared in the front lines one morn- 
ing, just as the first wave of infantrymen 
was about to go over in a charge against a 
machine gun nest. Standing talking to the 
regimental commander. General Muir fidg- 
eted for a few moments and then said: 



268 THE IRON DIVISION 

"I think I'll command one of those 
companies myself." 

To the amazement and great glee of 
officers and men, he did, the commander 
of the chosen company acting as second 
in command. Enemy shells landed all 
about the General, who manifested as 
much agility and energy as the youngest 
private. A shell fell within twenty-five 
feet of him, but fortunately it was a "dud," 
or one which failed to explode. There was 
vicious machine gun fire all about, but the 
nest was cleaned out and prisoners and 
guns were captured. General Muir rejoined 
the Colonel. He was breathing hardly 
faster than usual as he remarked: 

*'That was fine! It took me back to the 
old days in the Philippines." 

A few days later, the General was out 
again among the troops, accompanied by 
Colonel Sweeney, Captain Theodore D. 
Boal, of Boalsburg, Pa., Lieutenant Edward 
Hoopes, of West Chester, and Corporal 
Olin McDonald, of Sunbury, all of his 
staff. 

German planes were hovering overhead 
and suddenly one of them dropped like a 
plummet to a few hundred feet above the 



" AN ENVIABLE REPUTATION " 269 

ground and began to spit machine gun 
bullets at the group. A wounded soldier 
had just come out of the woods, stood his 
rifle against a tree and started back to a 
first aid station. General Muir seized 
the rifle, took careful aim at the flyer, 
about three hundred feet above, and fired 
twice. Whether he scored a hit could not 
be determined, but the airman fled after the 
second shot. 

In the course of the advance, the artillery 
went forward in echelons. That is, bat- 
teries from the rear moved up and took 
position in advance of other batteries 
which maintained the fire, passing between 
the guns on their way. After they were in 
position to fire, the one farther back 
ceased fire and the process was repeated. 

The Pennsylvania artillery cut a swath 
two miles wide through the forest, doing 
their work so thoroughly that beautiful 
green hills which could be descried by 
powerful glasses in the distance were, by 
the time the beholders reached them, 
nothing but shell-pitted, blackened mounds, 
ragged with beards of shattered and splint- 
ered trees, looking for all the world, as men 
from the Pennsylvania mountain country 



270 THE IRON DIVISION 

observed, like the hills at home after a 
forest fire. 

When the artillery reached Varennes, 
which was, of course, not until after the 
infantry had gone far beyond, they ran 
into a severe enemy shelling. On October 
2d, First Sergeant T. O. Mader, of Auden- 
ried, Luzerne county, a member of Bat- 
tery A, 109th Artillery, performed the deeds 
which won for him official citation and the 
Distinguished Service Cross. 

He helped to guide sections of the 
battery over a shell-swept road, when the 
fire was so severe that eight men were 
wounded and ten horses killed. The horse 
that Sergeant Mader rode was killed under 
him. The driver of a swing team had 
difficulty in controlling the horses of a 
section and Sergeant Mader sent him to 
another section and himself took charge of 
the fractious team. He continued with 
the section until he was so badly wounded 
he w^as unable to control the frantic horses. 
He refused to have his wounds treated, 
however, and continued to direct the gun 
carriages to places of safety. Then, dis- 
regarding his own condition, he requested 
the medical officers to give first attention 



"AN ENVIABLE REPUTATION" 271 

to other wounded men. The official cita- 
tion declared that "Sergeant Mader's con- 
duct was an inspiration to the men of his 
battery." 

Another "second in command" was put 
out of action at this time, Lieutenant- 
Colonel Olin F. Harvey, of the 109th 
Artillery, being severely wounded in the 
leg by a shell fragment. 

Beyond Varennes, the infantry found the 
going harder than before — ^much harder 
than anything they had encountered since 
going to France. The Germans had their 
backs to their boasted Brunnhilde line and 
fought with the desperation of despair to 
hold oflf the advancing Americans until 
their vast armies in the north could extri- 
cate themselves from the net Marshal Foch 
had spread for them with such consummate 
skill. 

Montblaineville and Baulny presented 
but temporary problems to troops flushed 
with victory, and they pushed on toward 
Apremont, below which they suffered the 
first serious check of the drive. Once more 
there was need for tremendous effort and 
heroic endeavor and once more the Penn- 
sylvania troops measured up to the need. 



272 THE IRON DIVISION 

Men who had distinguished themselves on 
the Marne, the Ourcq, the Vesle and Aisne 
Hved nobly up to the reputations for bravery 
they had already established, and they 
were emulated in inspiring style by men 
whose names had not before figured in the 
division's record of honor. 

The trench mortar battery of the artil- 
lery brigade was rivaled by men of the 
trench mortar platoons attached to the 
headquarters companies of the various 
infantry regiments, who carried their heavy 
weapons through the almost fathomless 
mud, in and out of shell craters, exhausted 
by the heat of the days and the bone- 
chilling cold of the nights. In spite of 
their heavy burdens, the mortar platoons 
always were close at hand when the infantry 
stopped, baffled by the mazes of wire, and 
called for the "flying pigs" to open a path. 

Men of every regiment filled stellar roles 
in this smashing advance. Lieutenant 
Godfrey Smith, of Gwynedd Valley, Pa., 
overcame innumerable obstacles and passed 
through many dangers to establish and 
maintain telephone communication between 
the advance posts and the rear areas of 
the 112th Infantry. Color-Sergeant Miles 



**AN ENVIABLE REPUTATION" 273 

Shoup, of Braddock, had charge of the 
runners and Haison work and displayed 
great personal bravery. 

Shoup had the reputation among the 
other men of bearing a charmed life and he 
was termed "a remarkable soldier" by 
more than one officer. In the advance of the 
morning of September 28th, Colonel Dubb 
became separated and Shoup volunteered 
to search for him. He located the Colonel 
after passing unscathed through a terrific 
artillery and machine gun fire, then returned 
the same way and organized additional 
runners to keep the communications intact. 

At night the Germans suddenly opened a 
smart barrage with big guns and men of 
the 112th became scattered. Lieutenant 
Smith assembled the men while the fire 
was going on, finding them in various shel- 
ters. It was necessary to wear masks 
because the Boche was mixing an occasional 
gas shell with his shrapnel and high explo- 
sives, but Lieutenant Smith persisted until 
he had returned the men to their various 
battalion positions and reorganized the 
companies. 

On another occasion. Lieutenant Smith 
was laying telephone wire with a detail of 

18 



274 THE IRON DIVISION 

headquarters company men. When the 
supply of wire ran out, he crawled through 
the woods to a German telephone line, 
within a short distance of German posi- 
tions, cut the wire and brought back 
enough to continue laying his own line. 

An officer of the 112th noticed that every 
time he called for a runner from any one of 
three companies, it was always the same 
man who responded. The man was Private 
Charles J. Ryan, of Warren, a member of 
Company I. When a lull came in the 
activity, the officer investigated in person, 
because the men assigned to act as runners 
should have taken turns and he suspected 
the others were imposing on Ryan, which 
is subversive of discipline. To his amaze- 
ment, he learned from the unanimous ac- 
counts of all the men, including Ryan, that 
the latter had insisted that the other run- 
ners should let him take all the assign- 
ments to duty. The officer put a stop to 
the method. 

France puts her clergymen into the army 
as fighting men, on the same basis as any 
other men. America exempts men of the 
cloth from military service, but offers 
them an opportunity to serve their country 



"AN ENVIABLE REPUTATION" 275 

and humanity, as well as their calling, by 
acting as chaplains to the fighting men. 
As such, they are supposed to have nothing 
to do with the fighting. But there come 
times, in the heat and rush of battle, when 
quick action by the nearest man of ability 
and judgment points the way to victory. 

Such an occasion arose on the second day 
of the Argonne drive, when all the officers 
of a battalion of the 111th Infantry were 
incapacitated. Lieutenant Charles G. 
Conaty, of Boston, a Catholic priest who 
was a chaplain in the 111th, was the only 
commissioned officer remaining with the 
battalion. He promptly jumped into the 
breach and led the men in a victorious 
charge. Lieutenant Conaty had not long 
recovered at that time from the effects of 
gas which he inhaled while working close to 
the lines in the Marne-Vesle drive. 

A German sniper wounded the "bunkie" 
of Thomas Corry, of Pittsburgh, a member 
of Company I, 111th Infantry. Corry 
started out to stalk the sniper in revenge. 
He spent the whole day at it and returned 
with half a dozen prisoners, all the snipers 
he had found except the ones who showed 
fight and had to be killed. 



276 THE IRON DIVISION 

A major of the 111th at one time sent a 
runner to the 109th machine gun battahon 
to ask for immediate assistance. Company 
B of the gunners, under Captain Daniel 
Burke Strickler, of Columbia, Pa., set out 
at once with a guide. They followed the 
guide over one hill, but saw no sign either 
of the enemy or a hard-pressed battalion 
of their own men. At the bottom of the 
next hill. Captain Strickler called a halt 
and asked the guide if he were sure the 
battalion was at the top. 

The guide replied that they were hardly 
100 yards away and started up the hill 
alone to make sure. He had gone not 
more than twenty feet when a masked 
machine gun battery opened up and the 
guide was shot to ribbons. Captain Strickler 
ascertained the location of the infantry lines 
from a wounded man who happened along 
on his way to the rear and started for them. 

The infantry, however, had been having a 
hard time and had been directed to retire 
while the artillery laid down a barrage. 
Unaware of this. Captain Strickler led his 
men up the hill and walked into the edge 
of our own barrage, but the company 
escaped without the loss of a man. 



"AN ENVIABLE REPUTATION" 277 

The effect of the American pressure now 
was being felt far behind the German front 
hnes, as was evidenced by the sheets of 
flame by night and clouds of smoke by day 
which signaled the burning of heaps of 
stores and the explosion of ammunition 
dumps far to the north. 

Advancing around Apremont, the 111th 
ran into difficulties and was delayed. Run- 
ners carried the word to the 55th Brigade 
and Captain Meehan and a battalion of the 
109th were detached and sent over to help. 
They cleaned out the Bois de la T'Aibbe, 
which was strongly garrisoned and offered 
a next to impregnable front, so that when 
the 111th disposed of its immediate diflS- 
culties it w^as able to move up to the same 
front as the rest of the regiments. 



CHAPTER XIX 

Ensanguined Apremont 

THE taking of Apremont was the 
greatest struggle the division had 
in its fighting career. Much has 
been said and written during the war of 
"the blood-soaked fields of France" and 
"streams of blood." OflScers who were 
at Apremont solemnly vouch for the fact 
that there was a time in that town when 
the water running in the gutters was bright 
red with blood. 

And not all of it was German blood. 

The town was held in force, much as 
Fismes and Fismette had been, and pre- 
sented much the same problem. So strong 
was the position that every approach to it 
was covered by heavy concentrations of 
machine guns and snipers. No longer 
were one or two Germans left in a nest to 
fire many guns as fast as they could. The 
enemy had brought up strong reinforce- 
ments of comparatively fresh troops and 
gave every evidence of a determination to 

(278) 



ENSANGUINED APREMONT 279 

stand. Not until compelled to by superior 
force did he let go, and then it was only to 
launch one counter-attack after another. 

It was at this time that Sergeant Andrew 
B. Lynch, of Philadelphia, won his Dis- 
tinguished Service Cross by a remarkable 
piece of daring and self-sacrifice. A mem- 
ber of the headquarters company of the 
110th Infantry, he was on duty with the 
one-pounder section of his company in a 
position slightly north of the village. Under 
orders he removed his guns to the rear and, 
after establishing the new position, was 
told that his commanding oflScer, Lieu- 
tenant Meyer S. Jacobs, had been taken 
prisoner. 

Sergeant Lynch and Corporal Robert F. 
JeflFery, of Sagamore, Pa., organized a 
rescue party of five and instantly moved 
forward and attacked a German patrol of 
thirty-six men who had Lieutenant Jacobs 
in custody. Fifteen of the Germans were 
killed and Sergeant Lynch personally took 
three prisoners and released his Lieutenant, 
unwounded. 

Immediately after the return to the 
American lines. Sergeant Lynch took com- 
mand of seventy-five of his company who 



280 THE IRON DIVISION 

had been held in reserve. Drawing his 
revolver, the sergeant commanded the 
men to follow him, launched a fresh attack, 
drove the enemy back two-thirds of a mile 
and established a new line in a ravine 
northwest of the village. The official 
citation when he was awarded his cross 
remarked that "Sergeant Lynch's conduct 
exemplified the greatest courage, judgment 
and leadership." 

Lieutenant John V. Merrick, of Rox- 
borough, Philadelphia, with D Company 
of the 110th Infantry, had gained an objec- 
tive to which he had been assigned and was 
holding the western end of a ravine near 
Apremont. He found his men were sub- 
jected to both a frontal and an enfilading 
fire and were without proper shelter. He 
ordered a withdrawal to a safer position 
and while doing so he was struck through 
the elbow and hand by machine gun 
bullets. 

Suffering intense pain, he declined to be 
evacuated and for two hours bravely and 
skilfully directed his men and brought 
them back to the company, together with 
stragglers from other units, who attached 
themselves to his party. 



ENSANGUINED APREMONT 281 

Captain Charles L. McLain, of Indiana, 
Pa., who had distinguished himself below 
the Marncj again came into prominence at 
Apremont. He learned that Company C, 
110th, was without officers. His own com- 
pany was in reserve. There was no supe- 
rior officer at hand, so without orders he 
turned over command of his own company 
to a junior officer, took command of the 
orphaned C Company and led the first 
wave in a hot attack. He was wounded in 
the leg, but continued at the head of his men, 
hobbling along with the aid of a cane, until 
his objective was reached. Then he allowed 
them to send him to a hospital. Both he 
and Lieutenant Merrick recovered from 
their wounds and rejoined their regiment. 

In the fighting close to the village of 
Apremont, the men used shell craters 
instead of digging trenches, organizing them 
as strong points. An attack on the 
German positions was planned for 5.30 
o'clock in the morning. About three 
hundred Pennsylvania infantrymen in the 
town were awaiting a barrage which should 
clear the way for them to advance. 

Oddly enough, the Germans had planned 
an attack for almost the same time. The 



282 THE IRON DIVISION 

Pennsylvanians were heavily supported by 
machine guns. The Germans launched 
their attack first and the result was better 
for the Pennsylvanians than they had 
expected to achieve in their own attack 
and was won with less cost. The Germans 
came straight at the shell craters and were 
mowed down in rows. Those that managed 
to get by ran into the waiting infantry in 
the town and those who survived that 
fight turned and fled, right past the machine 
guns in the shell holes again. It was piti- 
able, officers said later, or would have 
been if the Americans had not realized that 
the Germans had so much to answer for. 
Hardly a handful of the several hundred 
Germans who began that charge lived 
through it. 

At last the Germans launched one great 
attack, in which they apparently had every 
intention of driving the Americans from 
the village and the surrounding positions 
and every hope of being successful. They 
came on confidently and with undeniable 
courage. The fighting that resulted was 
desperate. Our Pennsylvania men stood 
up to them like the gallant veterans they 
had now become. 



ENSANGUINED APREMONT 283 

The fighting was hand-to-hand, breast-to- 
breast. In many spots, man contended 
against man in a struggle as primitive, as 
dogged and as uncompromising as any- 
fighting ever has been. When a contest 
narrowed down to one or two men on a 
side this way, there was but one outcome 
for the loser. There was neither time nor 
inclination on either side to surrender, nor 
time to take prisoners. Death, quick and 
merciful, for one or the other was the only 
possible eventuality. 

Our men fought like tigers, but the Ger- 
mans outnumbered them somewhat and, 
after their first rush, had a certain advan- 
tage of position. The 109th Infantry bore 
the brunt of this attack. Major Mackey, 
who as Captain Mackey had won place in 
the fighting annals of the division in the 
battle below the Marne, was in his post 
command in an advanced position when 
the attack was launched. The "P. C", 
as the army shortens post command, was 
in a cellar from which the house above 
had been almost blown away by artillery 
fire. With him were his battalion adju- 
tant and a chaplain. He was keeping 
in touch with the rear and with the regi- 



284 THE IRON DIVISION 

mental post command by means of tele- 
phone and runners. 

The runners ceased arriving and the 
telephone connection was severed. Only 
then did the men in the cellar realize the 
attack was gaining ground and that they 
might be in danger. Suddenly from directly 
over their heads came the angry " rat-a- 
tat-tat- tat-tat " of a machine gun, like a 
pneumatic riveter at work on the steel 
skeleton of a skyscraper back in God's 
country. Simultaneously, the bawling of 
hoarse-voiced commands in German told 
them that the visitors who had taken 
possession of the ground floor of their sub- 
terranean domicile were the pestiferous 
Boche. 

It is hardly necessary to add that Major 
Mackey and his companions kept quiet, 
expecting every moment to be called on to 
surrender. But Fritz had his hands full. 
Reinforcements were seeping up to the 
front line of the Americans and they were 
beginning to make a stand. Then the 
officers and men of Major Mackey's bat- 
talion saw what the Major had heard — 
the Hun machine gunners standing on the 
American "P. C." 



ENSANGUINED APREMONT 285 

It called for no special command. There 
was a wild yell of anger and defiance, and 
away the Pennsylvanians went to the 
rescue. The reinforcements were right at 
their heels. The Germans had shot their 
bolt and would have been compelled to 
retreat very soon anyway, but the plight 
of Major Mackey and the other officers 
hastened it. In a very short time the 
enemy was in flight northward once more. 

It was after this fight that Company H of 
the 109th buried twenty -four of its men, said 
to have been the largest loss in killed of any 
company in the division in one engagement 
during the war. The losses all through 
were exceedingly heavy. There were in- 
stances of companies emerging from the 
combat in command of corporals, every 
commissioned officer and every sergeant 
having been put out of action, and in at 
least one instance, a battalion was com- 
manded by a sergeant, the major, his staff, 
the commanders and lieutenants of all 
four companies having been incapacitated. 
It was terribly costly, but it wrote the 
name of Apremont on the records of the 
division as a word to thrill future members 
of the organization. 



286 THE IRON DIVISION 

From Apremont the advance veered over 
to the west, still following the course of the 
river, toward Chatel-Chehery. When the 
artillery reached Apremont it ran into 
trouble again. One battery of the 109th 
was shelled and knocked to pieces. Guns 
were torn from their carriages, limbers and 
caissons blown to bits, horses killed and a 
number of men killed and many injured. 

Colonel Asher Miner, of Wilkes-Barre, 
went out in person and assisted in rallying 
the gunners, bringing order out of chaos and 
directing the men to a new position. 
Speaking of Colonel Miner's presence of 
mind, his constant presence at the scene of 
danger, the care with which he looked after 
his men and equipment and his general 
efficiency and ability, Brigadier-General 
Price paid him a high compliment. 

"Colonel Miner showed bravery upon 
many occasions," he said, "but it is when 
men do what they do not have to do that 
they are lifted to the special class of heroes. 
Miner is one of these." 

It was but shortly after this that Colonel 
Miner was so badly injured in the ankle 
that his foot had to be amputated. 

Just after leaving Apremont, fighting 



ENSANGUINED APREMONT 287 

rod by rod, almost foot by foot, the infantry 
advance had a brisk engagement in the 
clearing out of Pleinchamp Farm. As was 
the case with the other farms of France 
which figured so frequently in the war news, 
this consisted of a considerable group of 
centuries-old buildings, built of stone with 
exceedingly thick walls, offering ideal pro- 
tection for machine guns, snipers and one- 
pounders. 

The buildings were so situated that a 
force attacking one was open to hot fire 
from most of the others. It was cleared 
of the Germans in a brilliant little engage- 
ment, however, and our men began to 
close in on Chatel-Chehery. They were 
now in the act of driving their way through 
the Kriemhilde line, the second German 
defense line in that sector, which the Ger- 
mans had predicted never would be broken. 

The 112th Infantry again came to the 
fore in this work. Hills 223 and 244, 
named from their height in meters — ^names 
which are purely for military purposes and 
appear only on the military maps — ^pre- 
sented formidable obstacles in the path of 
the regiment. It is not, however, the 
American way to stand about and talk of 



288 THE IRON DIVISION 

how strong the enemy probably is, so the 
112th took another hitch in its belt, clenched 
its teeth and set out in a rush for Hill 244. 
Rather to their surprise, they swept over 
the eminence in their first rush. Neither 
machine gun nor rifle fire halted them. It 
was not the 112th's day to be annoyed and 
it continued to wipe out the German defense 
positions on Hill 223 in the same way. 

The night before this attack. Sergeant 
Ralph N. Summerton, of Warren, sat in a 
kitchen of the regiment, feeling about as 
miserable as one man may. He was suffer- 
ing with Spanish influenza, and had upon 
his body and legs a number of aggravating 
wounds, inflicted when a German ''potato 
masher," or trench bomb, went otf close to 
him. He had refused to go to a hospital 
because he felt he was needed with the 
regiment, but he had upon his blouse two 
medical tags, indicating he had been treated 
for both the disease and the wounds. 

Lieutenant Dickson, the battalion adju- 
tant, and Lieutenant Benjamin F. White, 
Jr., a surgeon, entered and Summerton 
asked Lieutenant Dickson how things were 
with the regiment. The oflGicer remarked 
that there were no oflSicers to lead I Com- 



ENSANGUINED APREMONT 289 

pany in the attack next morning and 
Summerton started out. 

*' You'd better either stay here or go to 
a hospital; you're a sick man," said the 
medical officer, but Summerton disregarded 
the advice, went to the company and 
assumed command and led the first wave 
in the assault on Hill 244 next morning. 
He actually was the first to the top of the 
hill, and performed the feat under the 
eyes of the brigade commander, although 
he was almost reeling from his illness and 
his wounds. Not only that, but after 
gaining the crest he continued to lead the 
attack until he got a rifle bullet through 
the shoulder, which put him out of the 
action. 

The regiment came next against Chene 
Tondu Ridge, and here the whole division 
came to a pause. It took just four days to 
reduce that stronghold. It was a case 
where nothing could be gained and much 
lost by trying brute force and speed, so it 
was cleared of Germans by a regular course 
of siege operations in the tactics with 
which the Pennsylvanians now were so 
familiar. 

Some men spotted the German firing 



290 THE IRON DIVISION 

positions and concentrated their streams 
of bullets on them, while others crept 
forward to protected posts. These in turn 
set up a peppery fusillade and the others 
crept forward. So it went on, steadily up 
hill, steadily gaining, until, on the evening 
of the fourth day, the tired doughboys of 
the 112th lay down and slept on the crest 
of the ridge in token of their victory. They 
had redeemed it for France. 

These were the chief defenses which had 
to be overcome before the troops came to 
Chatel-Chehery itself. There much the 
same kind of fighting as at Apremont took 
place, although not on so fierce and exten- 
sive a scale. 



CHAPTER XX 

Toward Hunland 

NEAR Chatel-Chehery, in the depth 
of the woods, the soldiers found a 
hunting lodge which prisoners said 
had been occupied for a long time by the 
German Crown Prince. They said that, 
unmindful of the great tragedy such a short 
distance away and for which he was at 
least partly responsible, he entertained 
parties of gay friends at the lodge and went 
boar hunting in the forest. That he was 
more or less successful was attested by 
several large boars' heads on the walls. 

In the course of their progress up the 
valley, our men had captured a railroad 
which had been part of the German system 
of communications. With it were taken 
seven locomotives and 268 cars. The loco- 
motives were of odd construction, to Amer- 
ican eyes, having a big flywheel over the 
boiler, and on each a fanciful name was 
painted in German on the side of the cab. 
Locomotives and cars were camouflaged to 

(291) 



292 THE IRON DIVISION 

make them blend with the trees, bushes and 
ferns of the forest. An effort had been 
made to wreck them, but four were easily 
repaired and in a few hours after they were 
seized men of the 103d Engineers had the 
railroad running full blast and performing 
valuable service. 

Our men also had taken a complete 15- 
cottage hospital. It was located attract- 
ively upon the side of a hill and winding 
paths connected the buildings, which were 
of red brick and painted concrete. In the 
modern operating room a gruesome sight 
was presented. Evidently the hospital 
force had fled in haste as the Americans 
approached, for upon the operating table 
lay a dead German with one leg amputated. 
The detached member and the surgical 
implements lay right at hand, indicating 
that the surgeons had deserted the man 
upon the table while operating, without a 
thought for his welfare. 

Another valuable capture was an elec- 
trically-operated sawmill, with 1,000,000 
feet of prepared lumber. All of these, 
together with a number of electric power 
plants, were immediately set to work for 
the benefit of the division, the mill and 



TOWARD HUNLAND 293 

power plants under mechanics from the 
engineer regiment, the hospital under men 
from the sanitary train. 

Moving on from Chatel-Chehery, the 
division took Fleville and then came to the 
outskirts of Grand Pre, which promised to 
make itself worth the taking of any 
division and which did, indeed, prove 
quite a stumbling block. 

Not for the Iron Division, however, for 
its service of fourteen days in that mag- 
nificent drive was regarded as enough for 
one body of men and it was ordered with- 
drawn. The organizations were relieved on 
October 9th and 10th and moved southward, 
crossed the Aire and came to rest in posi- 
tions around Thiaucourt, sixteen miles south- 
west of Metz and about four miles back of 
the front lines. Division headquarters was 
established at Euvezin, several miles south- 
w^est of Thiaucourt. 

The artillery was detached and sent 
scurrying away along the rear of the 
roaring battle line, where the Germans now 
were rapidly nearing the crash to cause 
which our men had done so much. Straight 
away northwest they traveled, mile after 
mile, and when they finally came to a halt 



294 THE IRON DIVISION 

the gunners, to their utter amazement, 
found themselves in that devils' cauldron 
of the whole war, Belgium. 

Here they were attached to the Army of 
Pursuit, which was intended to hound the 
retiring Germans to the last ditch, but the 
signing of the armistice intervened before 
they saw real action. The artillerymen had 
thought they knew something about devas- 
tation and desolation from what they had 
seen hitherto, but the sights in Belgium 
taught them that they knew Httle of such 
things. That ghastly, bleak, barren land, 
clawed to pieces like a carcass under the 
beaks of carrion birds by four long years of 
war, left the Pennsylvania gunners speech- 
less with horror. 

Back with the division, the men had 
but a day or two to rest in the billets about 
Thiaucourt. Then, just after the middle of 
October, the 56th Brigade moved up toward 
the front and took position on a line, 
Xammes, Jaulny, Haumont. They had 
now become a part of the Second American 
Army, which obviously was getting into 
position for a drive on Metz, and our men 
looked forward to more strenuous work. 

The 55th Brigade was to have relieved 



TOWARD HUNLAND 295 

the 56th in ten days, but this order was 
countermanded. The 55th instead moved 
up and took position on the left of the 
56th, and it was approximately in these 
positions that the signing of the armistice 
found our men. In the meantime they had 
some smart action and a number of casual- 
ties, but the work was nothing which drew 
attention during the closing days of the 
world's greatest war. When hostilities 
ceased they were moved back somewhat and 
went into a real rest camp based on Heudi- 
court. On November 18th they achieved 
the right to wear a gold chevron on the 
left cuff in token of their having been six 
months in overseas service. 

Four days before this, however, on 
November 14th, the division w^as named as 
one of several to push forward toward the 
German frontier, to act in support of the 
Third Army, the American Army of Occu- 
pation. Disappointment at not having 
been made a part of the Army of Occupa- 
tion promptly gave way to rejoicing at this 
new honor and fresh evidence of the confi- 
dence reposed in the Pennsylvanians by the 
High Command. 

Some days before the signing of the 



296 THE IRON DIVISION 

armistice, General Muir had taken leave 
of the division with every sign of deep regret. 
He was going to take command of the 
Fourth Army Corps and Major-General 
William H. Hay succeeded him in com- 
mand of the Twenty-eighth. 

General Muir once more took occasion to 
voice his admiration for the division as a 
whole and directed that special orders, 
commending each unit and mentioning 
some of the special feats it had performed, 
be issued to the commanding officers of 
the units. These were in turn reproduced 
by the commanding officers and a copy 
given to each man. 

In concluding this record, probably noth- 
ing could be more appropriate than to 
quote the order of its fighting commander, 
citing its glorious action. The communica- 
tion read: 

"The Division Commander desires to 
express his appreciation to all the offi- 
cers and soldiers of the Twenty-eighth 
Division and of its attached units who, 
at all times during the advance in the 
valley of the Aire and in the Argonne 
forest, in spite of their many hardships 
and constant personal danger, gave their 



TOWARD HUNLAND 297 

best efforts to further the success of the 
division. 

*'As a result of this operation, which 
extended from 5.30 o'clock on the morning 
of September 26th until the night of Octo- 
ber 8th, with almost continuous fighting, 
the enemy line was forced back more than 
ten kilometers. 

"In spite of the most stubborn and at 
times desperate resistance, the enemy was 
driven out of Grand Boureuilles, Petite 
Boureuilles, Varennes, Montblainville, 
Apremont, Pleinchamp Farm, Le Forge and 
Chatel-Chehery, and the strongholds on 
Hills 223 and 244 and La Chene Tondu 
were captured in the face of strong machine 
gun and artillery fire. 

"As a new division on the Vesle River, 
north of Chateau-Thierry, the Twenty- 
eighth was cited in orders from General 
Headquarters for its excellent service, and 
the splendid work it has just completed 
assures it a place in the very front ranks of 
fighting American divisions. 

"With such a position to maintain, it is 
expected that every man will devote his 
best efforts to the work at hand to hasten 
that final victory which is now so near." 



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